Alan Lakey: Why counting condition numbers is futile

Insurers love bombarding advisers and clients with statistics, often useless or wrong. They can't help it, it's in their DNA and no doubt the practice will continue. One of these useless and misrepresentative habits is when an insurer states that it includes 51 or 98 critical illness conditions. The lazy adviser can use condition numbers as a means of divining plan superiority to the detriment of a trusting client. In fact, the adviser may not even realise that using condition numbers has hoodwinked him into according a status that is simply not merited. Fortunately there is now a ...