Impartial reviews on the latest products and how they can impact consumers.
November 2014 Havensrock: Group life
Havensrock is a new group life brand that launched on 1 October. Its plans are underwritten by Scottish Friendly and are distributed through Punter Southall Health and Protection Consulting (PSHPC). This plan is a group life scheme that is available as either a registered group life or an excepted group life plan. The Professions version clusters low risk employees together, allowing the insurer to offer competitive pricing and also a three year rate guarantee. Havensrock also offers a general group life cover plan and one for trustees, which provides individual, liability-matching life insurance for pension schemes. Excepted group life…
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November 2014 WPA: PMI
WPA describes this as the first multi-family healthcare plan. It means that extended families (grandparents; parents and children usually) can, in effect, have a mini group policy for the entire family, offering significant premium savings as well as convenience. So, a policy could be taken out by grandparents to cover their adult children and/or their grandchildren. Or, a parent might cover their children and their own parents. Theoretically cross-generational policies can fall foul of technical matters such as the lack of insurable interest but, as the plan generally pays just for treatment and because we can’t see much…
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October 2014 AXA PPP healthcare: iPMI
AXA’s new plan is an international private medical insurance (iPMI) plan for individuals and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) based in Kenya and Tanzania, offering the choice of treatment across Africa. Treatment can also be received in India or Pakistan. The plan is distributed by J W Seagon & Co, based in Nairobi. The plan offers a choice of packages, with names from Bronze to Platinum. Bronze covers active treatment of cancer, in and daypatient treatment, medical conditions during pregnancy and HIV/AIDS treatment. Bronze with outpatient add-on. Silver. Adds follow-up cancer and heart surgery consultations, hospital at home, cover for…
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October 2014 Beagle Street: CI
Beagle Street has improved the coverage under its online Critical Illness plans. The key changes are: Heart attack. The requirement for a specific level or raised enzymes has been dropped. Stroke. The requirement for permanent neurological deficit has been dropped. Instead, symptoms must last at least 24 hours and there must be evidence of death of brain tissue or haemorrhage. Carcinoma in situ of the breast has been added. Coronary angioplasty has been added. Payment is dependent on two or more coronary arteries being blocked to the extent of 70% diameter. Early stage prostate cancer has been added. Severe Crohn’s…
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October 2014 Legal & General: CI
L&G has enhanced cover for the top four most claimed critical illnesses (which make up almost 90% of its CI claims) – cancer, heart attack, stroke and multiple sclerosis. All are now ABI+ definitions (i.e. they offer wider cover than the industry standard definition). Updated definitions for blindness, deafness and carcinoma of the breast have also been introduced. Those for blindness and deafness meet the classifications used by the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Action on Hearing Loss (previously the Royal National Institute of Deaf People). A new online interactive body tool ‘AnatoME’ has also been introduced. This…
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