Impartial reviews on the latest products and how they can impact consumers.
March 2011 PruHealth: PMI
Since taking over Standard Life Healthcare’s PMI book last year, PruHealth now has over 700,000 members and an 11% market share of the UK PMI sector. From 1 March PruHealth is launching a new range of personal, business and corporate plans to take over from its existing PruHealth and Standard Life Healthcare products (new plans only, initially). Our review is based on the new age-rated Business Healthcare proposition, which is built around having Core Cover, which provides: • Full cover for in-patient and day-patient hospital fees, specialist fees and diagnostic tests. • Out-patient MRI, CT and PET scans. • Core…
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March 2011 Ageas Protect: CI | Term
Ageas Protect is the new name for what, until the start of this year, was Fortis Life. Low Start is a new variant on Ageas’ existing products. The low start concept was popular back in the 1980s with mortgage endowment products and enables customers to buy the same cover at a lower initial monthly premium. Annually, that premium increases and will eventually be higher than that on a regular premium plan. Over time, it is a more expensive way to buy cover, but has the significant advantage of lower premiums at outset. The low start route was popular as it…
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February 2011 Simplyhealth: HCP
Simplyhealth’s new health cash plan (HCP) is, as its name suggests, aimed at people aged 70 or over. This group is often either ignored or disenfranchised by insurers or most are priced out of the market. Simplyhealth’s approach is instead to offer a simple plan at low cost, with benefits optimised for older customers. So, this is not glam cover but bread and butter cover for bread and butter people and none the worse for that. Indeed, for intermediaries, the marketing opportunity is both older clients and their (often) more affluent children who can afford to buy cover for them…
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February 2011 Medical Care Direct: PMI
Medical Care Direct’s Health Link is a healthcare trust fund for firms with as few as 100 employees. Previously such schemes have tended to be the province of 1,000+ schemes, due to the cost and complexity of their set up. The scheme includes comprehensive third party administration, MCD’s unique Treatment Sourcing Service and stop loss insurance in one fixed price package. MCD says that healthcare trusts can offer employers savings of up to 20% a year when compared to PMI. Partly that is because, except for the stop loss premiums, payments into the scheme do not attract Insurance Premium Tax—which…
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February 2011 Health Shield: HCP
Health Shield has added a new entry level ‘Access Level’ to its existing voluntary Corporate scheme. This costs just £1.25 a week (or £2.50 a week if partner cover is required too) and provides maximum annual benefits (100% reimbursement unless indicated otherwise) of: • Dental: £30. • Dental accident: £100. • Optical: £30. • Hospital benefit: £10 a night/day up to 25 pa. • Parental hospital stay: up to 25 nights a year. • Maternity: £75 cash sum single payment. • Physiotherapy; chiropractic; osteopathy; acupuncture, and homeopathy: £60. • Specialist consultation, ECG, X-ray and pathology fees: £60. • Chiropody: £30.…
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