Impartial reviews on the latest products and how they can impact consumers.
May 2015 Aviva: Term
Five years ago, in 2009, Aviva became the first UK life insurer to offer free life cover to new parents. It offered a free one year term insurance policy with a sum insured of £10,000. Now, it has revamped the offering, increasing the sum insured to £15,000 for both parents for each child. Policies are also available up to the child’s fourth birthday. The cover still lasts just one year and to get it, parents simply register online (http://www.aviva.co.uk/life/free-parent-life-cover/) or phone 0800 404 6465 or contact their financial adviser. No payment is taken, and Aviva does not ask for any…
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April 2015 Denplan: Dental
Denplan has introduced an option that enables its corporate clients to now include eldercare cover for employees. Denplan says JP Morgan was the first corporate client to adopt this option, adding it to its flexible employee benefits scheme. There are now over 11m people in the UK over age 65 and nearly 1 in 5 people in the UK will live to age 100. More working age people are therefore likely to have elderly parents and many of those will or could be financially dependent on their children to some extent. Over time, the ageing population is also more likely…
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April 2015 Legal & General: Other
L&G has designed a group risk insurance product to cover private sector pension schemes for the extra costs they incur if one of their members becomes ill or disabled and takes ill health early retirement. Such events can happen quite often – the insurer estimates that a 200 member scheme could expect to have one such ill health early retirement every four years. Taking an ill-health pension triggers an immediate increase to the pension scheme’s liabilities. In turn, that feeds straight through to the employer’s balance sheet. L&G’s solution effectively enables larger employers to now insure against the risk. The…
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April 2015 Ropner Insurance Services: Other
Ropner is a Lloyd’s broker and this new plan offers a simple way for employers to offer cancer-only cover to employees. The policy has a fixed benefit of £25,000 and pays out on diagnosis of specific cancers once the insured life has survived for 30 days. The annual cost varies from £9.34 for employees aged under 25 up to £280.93 a year for those aged between 60 and 64. There must be at least 25 members in the scheme. Comment: Many firms like the idea of offering critical illness (CI) insurance to their employees, but such cover can be complex…
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April 2015 Friends Life: CI
Friends Life has introduced a number of changes to its existing critical illness (CI) plans and also added a new option across its protection plans. The changes include: The existing cancer definition has been simplified. A new ‘less advanced cancer’ definition has been added. This benefit is an additional payment and covers 20 specific types of cancer and pays out a lower benefit compared to the full cancer definition. A severe hearing loss additional payment has been added. This complements the existing deafness definition, which continues. All additional payments are now the lower of £25% of the full benefit or…
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