I treat life and critical illness as fairly commoditised products for perfectly healthy people aged under 35. Can I do more to help them in this area?
Andrew Ward, Yoursure
Subject to critical illness cover being suitable for the client, the first conversation would be about the structure of the plans, as some policies are geared to being more comprehensive and others are closer to the ABI standard.
ABI+s are a great place to start for a picture of who is competitive within the market. This may leave us with only a handful of providers that are competitively priced but go the extra mile. Once the client appreciates the differences and how they apply to them, I would then get he or she to look at the illnesses covered and see how appropriate to them some of the enhanced benefits are.
They may feel that an enhanced cancer definition is more appropriate than paralysis of one limb for example. Before the client makes a final decision I would ask them to consider additional benefits available to them as these additions can be valuable add-ons.
Best Doctors, Care Consultants, Red Arc, Vitality schemes and others that are all valuable options and are also worth considering if the client feels that each policy is of similar consequence to themselves. However this should not be used as the sole motivating factor for buying a policy.
The policy with the most comprehensive structure for the client is still the most important thing to consider as even though chances of claiming are fairly remote at a young age, I would like my client to have the biggest chance of a successful payout.
Peter Lurie, Proactive Medical and Life
Although commoditised, many plans provide bells and whistles incentives. With the introduction of the whole of life non-investment and accelerator products from PruProtect, it really gives us many more options to work with and again more choice for the consumer.
For too many years, we have been an advanced nation of term assurance, based on mortgage protection, unlike the rest of the world (South Africa, Australia and the US), where whole of life has been endemic in the industry.
But it seems we are finally making the right steps to revolutionise the market with new products. What is more appealing in these products is what is provided as a treating customers fairly tool - it's not just the traditional life and critical illness product of the past, but it has more to offer.
It is important to have the likes of Best Doctors and Helping Hand, which I use frequently in selling a product. How reassuring it is for a client to know there is more than just the payout and that which assists further to the family and even those who don't have cover. Today's products are more about offering what the client expects to receive rather than causing problems at the claim stage, or perhaps receiving benefits for that of which the main body of the cover doesn't even provide benefit.
Although it makes it more complicated for us as brokers to get a fair view of what extras companies are offering, it does give us the advantage of whittling down those bells and whistles, to those best suited to the client. It is certainly becoming a more exciting environment day by day.
Phil Jeynes, PruProtect
There are many ways in which different critical illness plans vary and the key is giving full explanations to your clients in order that they may make an informed choice. For example, some plans do not cover less severe conditions such as low grade prostate cancer or mastectomy whereas others do.
Some providers have additional benefits built into their cover such as access to medical helplines or options to cover fractured and broken bones.
It is vital to discuss serious illness cover with your clients as well, since the severity based approach to covering up to 161 conditions means customers are much more likely to make a valid claim when compared with traditional CI. The fact that your clients are young and healthy at point of sale does not make full consideration of all the available options any less important, particularly since the plan they end up choosing is likely to cover them for 20 years or more.
Also, this type of client is likely to have (or have plans to have) young children.
Therefore, discussing the levels of children's cover afforded by a plan is key, especially with PruProtect offering up to an additional £100k should the customer opt to take it (including life only plans).
Simple life cover is far more uniform in terms of comparison, but again looking at additional benefits within the plan, comparing claims statistics where published and evaluating the service levels on offer form fundamental considerations for good advice.
This all adds value to your advice and means your clients have a fuller understanding of the type of cover they decide to choose.
