Canada Life Critical Illness
Canada Life came into the individual protection insurance market in August 2015 and has now introduced a number of changes to its individual CI product. The key changes are:
A new additional payment condition has been added, which pays the lower of £25K or 25% of the sum insured on diagnosis of carcinoma in situ of the cervix, carcinoma in situ of the oesophagus or ovarian tumours of borderline malignancy.
The definitions for deafness, heart attack and Parkinson plus syndromes have been improved.
For children’s cover, the maximum benefit is now the lower of £25K and 50% of the adult cover.
Comment: These are good solid improvements to the cover and clearly, Canada Life believes that at this stage it just needs to tweak the product in order to keep it fresh and competitive. Indeed, independent analysts CI Expert says they help the plan maintain its position towards the top of its quality tables.
Personally, I’m not sure I agree. CI is now a tired product (it’s more than three decades since it started in the UK) and needs fresh ideas. Canada Life is best known in group risk but, coming back to the individual sector, is in a position to change things more than perhaps an existing player can. To be fair, innovation is about more than just product details and Canada Life has continued to focus on getting business on the books smoothly (80% of customers can go live straight away it says) and providing practical help and advice to customer when they need it.
But the challenge is to do more. Why is that important? Well, for one thing, CI sales are around half of their peak annual sales so, if we want to get back to such sales (any reason why we shouldn’t?) the whole market needs to do more.
Overall though that is strategy and this is a product review. So, in terms of where the plan now sits relative to the rest of the CI market, these are good solid changes – above all, they benefit customers, and advisers too.
Plus points: A handful of updates that make the cover wider and (with the Parkinson’s consolidating change) simpler; Already a good plan; New additional early stage cancer benefits; Continued focus on getting business on the books and looking after customers well.
Not so plus points: Some of the changes just bring Canada Life into line with others; Some other CI type plans can offer wider cover; CI remains hard for customers to know exactly what they are and aren’t covered for (unless they can understand the medicolegal definitions - and most of us can’t); A missed opportunity? – CI needs more fresh thinking to achieve its full sales potential.
Website: http://www.canadalife.co.uk.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 7. Overall: 8.5. Gold
Tags: CI; Canada Life