Zurich Critical Illness Cover
Zurich has radically reviewed its CI (critical illness insurance) offering, updating 50 conditions. It now covers a total of 85 conditions.
For cancer – its main claims head (59% of all its CI claims), where it paid out almost £50m in cancer CI claims in 2015, as well as the main cancer definition, Zurich also now offers additional payments for 22 less advanced cancers, including skin cancer. It has also simplified the wording on its main cancer definition and has included an additional other cancers in situ definition to catch what it says are all other known early stages of the disease.
Heart conditions are the next most common claims head, and they made up 20% of Zurich’s CI claims in 2015. Here, Zurich now covers nine specific heart related conditions.
Additional payouts pay out the lower of 20% of the sum insured or £15,000 and do not reduce the plan’s full sum insured, with no restriction of the number of such claims that can be made either.
In total, Zurich now covers 85 conditions (up from 58, including 32 additional payments - up from 12) and 19 conditions are now ABI+ or exceed the recommended industry wording. Zurich says it has also simplified its policy wording and removed some claim requirements from key conditions.
Comment: Zurich was one of the early pioneers of CI cover in its Allied Dunbar days and has had a thorough go through of its existing CI cover to help it again take centre stage on CI (OK it has not done that badly recently, but you take the point). The process has seen the number of conditions covered upped from 58 to 85, and partial conditions covered up from 12 to 32, with 19 conditions in total now being ABI+ or equivalent.
So the cover is clearly wider – and that’s a good thing, although, as with other CI providers, we can count the numbers but still not know roughly how many extra claims per 1,000 customers this is likely to result in each year.
Just as important, Zurich has looked at making its policy wording simpler and has made claiming easier too. Such measures I know from personal experience are darned hard to do, but essential if people’s perceptions of cover and trust in insurers is to be improved.
The result is a clearly improved plan that’s good for customers and advisers alike, although nothing is really ground breaking.
Plus points: Major update of existing CI plan; Conditions covered up from 58 to 85; More additional payments; Simplified wordings and reduced claims requirements = more cover and so more claims can be paid; Good track record on claims, which is proudly published.
Not so plus points: More conditions covered = more complexity; Wider cover but we don’t know by how much.
Website: http://www.zurich.co.uk.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 8. Overall: 8.5. Gold
Tags: CI; Zurich