LifeSearch

Scottish Provident has announced that children's critical illness benefit is now their fourth biggest claims paid area (from January 1996 to December 2005), with over £4 million being paid out. Not all critical illness policies automatically cover children and the comprehensiveness of children's cover varies greatly between providers. It is imperative that consumers fully understand what their critical illness policy will cover them for and to compare it with others on the market. This announcement also highlights the importance of ensuring customers consider critical illness cover separately from mortgage advice and look at more complete family protection – including income protection cover and family income benefit. Cancer, Heart Attack and Strokes saw the biggest number of claims over the 9 year period for Scottish Provident respectively.

Comments of the week: non-disclosure

"It is in no-one's interests for people to buy life insurance and protection policies that do not pay out because of non-disclosure that could have been prevented."
Richard Walsh, ABI

"It needs to be made crystal clear to the consumer what is covered and what is not covered by life insurance and protection policies. At the end of the advisory process clients should not be harbouring any unrealistic expectations about the circumstances under which they will be able to make a claim of their life assurance policy"
Fay Goddard, AIFA

Heroes of the week

Scottish Provident

For updating their paid and non-paid critical illness claims statistics. Scottish Provident has now paid over £392 million to their customers in critical illness claims since 1996. In 2005 they paid over £94 million to 1489 claims. 261 claims in 2005 were unpaid (17.5%) with 118 of those claims declined for not meeting the policy definitions and 143 declined for non-disclosure.

Beat the Booze Campaign

Freelance journalist and protection consultant Edmund Tirbutt has launched a Beat the Booze Campaign.

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