LV= Critical Illness Cover
LV= has further enhanced its existing critical illness cover. The changes include:
- Increasing the number of conditions covered from 59 to 64, upping those with ABI+ definitions from 18 to 19 and adding more partial payments, taking those to 20.
- A full payment is now made for all clinically diagnosed heart attacks. LV= estimates this will mean it will pay out 10% more heart attack claims a year
- For stroke, there is no longer a requirement for permanent neurological deficit. Instead the plan pays out if symptoms have persisted for 24 hours or more.
- For cancer, the severity limit has been lowered for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (of which there are 3,200 cases a year).
- The definition for multiple sclerosis (MS) has been extended so that the policy now pays out on evidence of two or more attacks of impaired motor or sensory function.
- The deafness definition is now ABI+.
- Parkinson’s disease now has an improved ABI+ definition.
- Partial payments have been added for six new conditions. This includes Type 1 diabetes (with no age restrictions), partial loss of hearing and ovarian tumour. There is an increased payment for accident hospitalisation, an improved definition for AVM of the brain and an increased payment for ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast. All benefits are now either 12.5% or 25% of the plan sum insured, after which the plan continues as before.
- Children’s cover has been improved by extending cover to age 21 (with no requirement to be in full time education), covering conditions that existed before birth (congenital conditions) and removing the initial 30 day waiting limit from birth.
Comment: We’ve reviewed LV=’s CI plans before, most recently last August. Now it has introduced more changes to extend cover even further. We have long been critical of insurers increasing cover but not giving any indication of how many extra claims might be paid, so hats off to LV= for going some way to remedy that. For example, its heart attack definition change means it now expects to pay around 10% more heart attack claims. We think that’s a very positive move and hope it will be further extended in future by all CI insurers.
The bottom line is that if you liked this plan before, you’ll probably like it even more now.
Plus points: More conditions covered and improvements to some existing conditions; Better child cover, now covering all children to age 21; On top of an already popular CI plan.
Not so plus points: As with all CI plans, more conditions adds complexity, although there has been some simplification of benefits too; More could still be done to set out how wide CI cover is, what the gaps are and what any changes could mean in practice in terms of likely claims payable.
Website: http://www.lv.com