Aviva Individual Protection (Income Protection+)
Aviva has spent the past year and a bit (following its acquisition of Friends Life in April 2015), reviewing how best to incorporate the best bits of both organisations’ well-respected protection offerings.
The new products are called Life Insurance+, Life Insurance+ with CIC, Critical Illness+ and Income Protection+. The plans include Aviva’s ‘protection promise’. This provides free life cover during underwriting, up to £500,000. Life change benefit, separation benefit and house purchase cover are also available subject to underwriting, at no extra cost.
Income Protection+ offers benefit of up to £20,000 a month and underwriting on an own occupation basis. Cover can run to a selected age or for a two year limited period. A range of deferred options is available, including a dual deferred facility. Other benefits include waiver of premium; back to work benefit; hospital benefit; family carer benefit; trauma benefit; benefit guarantee and a deferred period arrangement for NHS doctors and surgeons.
Plans are designed to use the digital ALPS platform. This includes a simple user-friendly calculation to choose the main plan parameters. Cover includes a benefit guarantee and customers can choose an annual benefit increase to account for salary increases.
All Income Protection+ policies also provide access to a ‘Back to Work’ benefit, family carer benefit, hospital benefit and physio treatment. Trauma benefit and significant professional development are also available, subject to underwriting.
Across the new products, Aviva offers a raft of help, information and support mechanisms through what it calls Support Plus. These include:
Second Opinion by Best Doctors.
Bupa Anytime Healthline (nurse-led phone support).
Care and Counselling Services (face-to-face or phone support for all the family).
Two additional benefits are also available:
Global Treatment (second opinion and treatment abroad up to £1m pa per person). This benefit costs £4 a month.
Fracture Cover (cash lump sum on a sliding scale up to £60K). This benefit costs £3 a month.
Comment: Aviva has done a good job in trying to bring together two different approaches in its new protection range. The end result is complex (although not as complex as some) and flexible, offering a choice of how best to put together the right benefits for most clients.
Disappointingly, there is relatively little that is new or exciting here – although arguably the market leader does not need to do that anyway. Certainly, supporters of Aviva and Friends Life’s old products will see lots that they are familiar with and a few good surprises too.
In a market that remains dominated by price, competitive pricing and the power of the Aviva brand should make sales of these products a relatively straightforward task for most advisers. Tampering with existing successful products, and especially trying to bring together two different approaches, is never easy. The result here largely works and gives Aviva a platform on which to build further in future too.
For the adviser, yes there is a lot to take in but the aviva-for-advisers.co.uk website is a good place to start (and sets out well how each product works), while the ALPS platform enables advisers to explain the cover well to clients and then to process and manage applications
Plus points: The best bits of Aviva and Friends Life in a new package; Good flexibility; Some uprated benefits; Biggest insurance brand in the UK.
Not so plus points: Potential over-complexity; Relies on digital ALPS platform to best manage, which may put some advisers off; Only one limited payment term (two years); Relatively unadventurous.
Website: http://www.aviva.co.uk.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 8. Overall: 8. Gold
Tags: Income protection; Aviva