Legal & General Critical Illness
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 explains the definitions of a wide range of critical illnesses in a clear and simple way.
Altogether, L&G covers 41 conditions.
Comment: This month (September 2014) has seen a plethora of CI updates as insurers compete to offer the best cover. L&G’s revised definitions widen its cover but the bottom line on all CI plans is that if you have what you and your medical advisers believe is a critical illness that severely affects your life or life expectancy, you will expect a payout but you may have to wade through pages of complex medico-legal definitions to know if what you have is covered. There must be a better way…
In fact, L&G’s new AnatoME system aims to provide the sort of practical help IFAs and customers need to understand what in layman’s terms is covered.
Until a better way of defining a critical illness is developed, we welcome these changes as any widening of cover must (assuming the price is right) benefit those unlucky enough to get a condition now covered.
Plus points: Revised and improved definitions for the most common claims causes and some other conditions too; AnatoME looks to help simplify what the policy actually covers.
Not so plus points: CI is getting ever more complex and customers will have little idea of what is or should be covered and many IFAs will struggle too unless they use a good third party comparison system.
Website: http://www.legal&general.com.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 7.5. Overall: 8. Gold
Tags: L&G; CI