Alan Lakey, director of CI Expert, said: “Friends Life has made a number of significant improvements to its CIC product with a clear focus on continuing to offer top of the market cover.
“The seven conditions have had their wordings tidied up to meet the December 2015 deadline for complying with the changes to ABI model wordings. These have minimal impact other than to add clarity.”
The four major changes are:
1. The introduction of a new over-arching condition – less advanced cancers
2. The introduction of severe hearing loss as a new additional payment condition
3. Ensuring homogenous payouts for all additional payment conditions
4. Removal of Alzheimer’s disease which is already covered within Dementia
Less advanced cancers
Friends Life currently includes four specific in situ cancers; breast, prostate, cervix and bladder which provide for payments between £12,500/12.5% and £25,000/25%.
The new condition covers 20 in situ cancers, in addition to the four shown above, including gallbladder, larynx, lung/bronchus, ovary, stomach and testicle.
The improvement means Friends Life now offers the widest cancer cover within a standard CI policy.
Severe hearing loss
The ABI model wording, standard for most providers, requires hearing loss in the better ear to be 95 decibels or higher. The additional payment reduces it to 70 decibels in the better ear.
The wording mirrors deafness working used by Old Mutual and L&G both of which provide 100% payouts.
Additional payment conditions
All additional payment conditions are mandated as the lower of £25,000 or 25% of the sum assured to remove confusion.
In some instances this has doubled the existing payment. For example in cases of in situ cancer of the breast and cervix.
Lakey added: “In short, the above improvements are beneficial in that they will increase the numbers of claims and simultaneously reduce those cancer claims that are currently declined for being in situ.
