November 2014 ACE: ASU
ACE’s Sickpay Plus is a sickness and accident policy with a choice of deferred periods. The plan is underwritten by Ace European Group Ltd. The plan is available to UK employees, through their employer, who are aged 18-65 at outset. Underwriting is interesting in that the price of the plan depends on benefits chosen plus the customer’s age, occupation, salary, smoking status and BMI (body mass index). The underwriting process appears to take a few days, with cover only starting approximately ten days after the application form is completed. Pre-existing conditions are excluded (looking back one year, with…
read more »
November 2014 Aegon: WL
Aegon’s new whole of life plan is aimed primarily at older people who have an Inheritance Tax liability on their death and want life insurance to cover that. However, whilst such policies should probably be written in trust, not all of them are (indeed, most of them are not Aegon reckons). Aegon’s solution is to make its discretionary trust an integral part of the application process, even if the application is online. The customer is required to sign two copies of the trust form of authority and to make an oral declaration of trust to their financial adviser (which…
read more »
November 2014 Havensrock: Group life
Havensrock is a new group life brand that launched on 1 October. Its plans are underwritten by Scottish Friendly and are distributed through Punter Southall Health and Protection Consulting (PSHPC). This plan is a group life scheme that is available as either a registered group life or an excepted group life plan. The Professions version clusters low risk employees together, allowing the insurer to offer competitive pricing and also a three year rate guarantee. Havensrock also offers a general group life cover plan and one for trustees, which provides individual, liability-matching life insurance for pension schemes. Excepted group life…
read more »
November 2014 WPA: PMI
WPA describes this as the first multi-family healthcare plan. It means that extended families (grandparents; parents and children usually) can, in effect, have a mini group policy for the entire family, offering significant premium savings as well as convenience. So, a policy could be taken out by grandparents to cover their adult children and/or their grandchildren. Or, a parent might cover their children and their own parents. Theoretically cross-generational policies can fall foul of technical matters such as the lack of insurable interest but, as the plan generally pays just for treatment and because we can’t see much…
read more »
