Friends Life Critical Illness cover
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 £25,000.
The Alzheimer’s disease definition has been removed, as this is already covered within the dementia definition.
A new option called Global Treatment has been introduced on the CI and indeed all Friends Life Protect+ plans. Offered in association with Best Doctors, the option costs an extra of £4 a month or £8 a month on joint life policies. This benefit pays up to £1m per customer per year (with a lifetime limit of £2m) and pays for all treatment globally for cancer, neurosurgery, coronary artery by-pass surgery, heart valve replacement or repair, bone marrow and live donor organ transplant. The option is available to customers and their children, and also covers all transport and accommodation costs and pays £100 per night of hospital stay. In addition, Global Treatment pays up to £50k for medication if it is not available on the NHS when the patient returns home.
Comment: CI is a product where insurers typically now review their proposition periodically, tweaking existing conditions covered (usually to widen coverage) and adding new ones. That can make life hard for advisers (although systems such as CI Expert can help) and confusing for customers who might expect, not unreasonably, that critical illness insurance will cover all critical illnesses. None do, but they are getting closer.
Friends’ changes are therefore welcome, even though more conditions invariably means more complexity too.
Global Treatment is a very interesting proposition too – and can be added to any of Friends’ Protect+ plans. It means that a customer diagnosed with say cancer can find out where in the world to consider going to get the best treatment. Global Treatment then pays for them to get there, stay there and get the treatment. Invariably the CI element of the plan would usually pay out too, so all costs should be covered and the customer has a pretty fair chance of getting the best medical outcome too. Given those benefits, you might expect an eye-watering price tag too, but the option only costs £4 a month, which looks to be pretty good value to us.
Plus points: More changes mean even more coverage and Friends claims to be a leader in terms of coverage; Cancer cover is now especially good, with 20 generally lower level cancers now paying a lower benefit if diagnosed too; Global Treatment could be a dealmaker for many - it not only suggests where to get the best treatment worldwide, it pays for it and travel and accommodation costs too – all for just an extra £4 a month.
Not so plus points: Global treatment only covers some (albeit often more serious or life threatening) conditions; Additional payments are capped at £25K – some people might prefer to pay more to get more; As with all CI plans, cover is wider but not yet 100% of all critical illnesses.
Website: http://www.friendslife.com.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 9. Overall: 9. Platinum
Tags: CI, Friends Life