Exeter Family Friendly is believed to be one of the first insurers to publicly revamp its protection products to accommodate the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on gender based pricing.
The provider has re-launched its Income One income protection (IP) product (formerly known as the Professional Income Protection plan) with a series of adjustments, including removing the premium structure to comply with European law.
This may be the start of an industry trend as although some providers' products are already gender neutral, others may have to implement significant changes before the deadline in December 2012.
The policy is targeted at those in low-risk, professional and mainly administrative occupations and now includes a higher protection level (up to 65% of income, up from 50%).
It also includes an increased list of occupations covered following requests by intermediaries.
In addition to these changes, it now includes an option for customers to fix a proportion of their benefits, removing or reducing the risk of over-insurance.
Mike O'Brien, head of intermediary sales at Exeter Family Friendly, said: "The recent ECJ ruling dictates that insurers will all have to make a change if they price their plans according to gender.
"We wanted to make that change as positive as possible by taking the opportunity not only to do this, but at the same time make the enhancements that have a positive impact on intermediaries.
"Advisers have consistently told us that if we could increase the proportion of income that can be covered, we would open up the product to more customers; so that's what we've done.
"It's a simple change, but one we believe has the potential to have a large impact on the market," he added.
