Canada Life is introducing telephone interviewing for all of its group insurance products.
It hopes the move will benefit customers by speeding up the underwriting decision process while also reducing non-disclosure. The provider says that after a successful pilot, all members on all new schemes will continue to be dealt with via a health declaration form.
Cases that require further information, or further detail on existing medical conditions, will be referred to the tele-underwriting service provided by MorganAsh.
This move is expected to reduce the time taken on an underwriting decision making process by 20% compared to the previous approach of obtaining a GP report for all cases that require further medical information.
In addition, it says that by speaking directly to the scheme member, telephone interviewing ensures that more accurate information is obtained - substantially reducing medical non-disclosure.
Jon Ford, operations director at Canada Life explains that improving the underwriting process is a key element of their plans.
"We have already redesigned the health declaration form this year and now we are extremely pleased to introduce telephone interviewing to all of our products," he says.
"Telephone interviewing ensures we have all of the relevant information from the end user at the earliest possible instance - making the process more accurate and time efficient for all involved," he adds.
Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh, is delighted to have finalised the agreement for both big-t and little-t services after conducting the initial trial.