Adam Saville: The most-read articles of 2020

To kick things off for 2021, here is a breakdown of the most-read articles on the COVER site from last year. We had more than one million page views in total during the course of 2020 and below you can find each highest scoring article ranked in order.

Our two most popular stories were related to the government's self-employed income support scheme, perhaps helped somewhat by favourable Google search engine results.

On the health insurance side, last year kicked off in relatively normal fashion, with Bupa announcing its ‘Is it normal?' mental health TV ad campaign, a question which we all found ourselves asking when the world was seemingly turned upside down a few months later. Interestingly, the private medical insurance provider followed with part two, which asked 'What is normal now?' in light of Covid-19.

As you'd expect, it was the coronavirus virus and the subsequent pandemic that scored the lion's share of the COVER traffic in 2020, something explored in detail as early as February by Vitality's John Downes' monthly column about underwriting considerations for specific conditions. His follow-up focus on Covid-19 and respiratory conditions, which marginally missed out on a top 10 placing, is also well worth (re)checking out.

My market reaction piece to the outbreak, written all the way back in January last year, just as Covid-19 was beginning to set foot on European soil, makes for interesting (if not ignorant) reading 12 months on, offering a reminder of how much we've learnt about the novel virus - and of how much our lives have been so dramatically altered - in such a relatively short amount of time.

The protection industry's signposting agreement signed in January was another big story for 2020 and one of the year's few positives. It set the agenda for the decade ahead and helped spur our ongoing access to insurance ‘Sign up to Signposting' campaign.

It is therefore fitting that an equally top scoring article was Aviva's recent underwriting changes to improve access to insurance following the underwriting restrictions brought in due to coronavirus earlier in the year. Meanwhile, Aviva's new DigiCare+ added value service offering focus on prevention, reported on first by COVER at the end of September, narrowly missed out on a spot in the list below.

Our round-up of all the changes made to income protection propositions at the start of the pandemic also ranked highly, while on the proposition side, AIG's radical overhaul of its critical illness product - another story broken by COVER - was without doubt the biggest CI update of 2020.

The top 50 most-read articles of last year can be found ranked in order below.