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Protection underwriting tightening but ‘CI and IP booming’ – iVENT 2020

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  • 23/09/2020
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Protection underwriting tightening but ‘CI and IP booming’ – iVENT 2020
Protection insurers are asking more questions and taking longer to underwrite cases but the market is still going strong, according to Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB).

 

Speaking at the Mortgage Administrator Ivent, MAB protection proposition director Andy Walton explained that some cases were taking longer due to insurers and GPs being slower.

However, the firm has seen an 80 per cent increase in income protection (IP) sales with the critical illness market buoyant too.

Walton also emphasised the key role administrators played in getting cases through, this included a major campaign from the firm to revisit customers who missed getting policies put in trust.

 

Pressure on administrators

Walton noted there was quite a lot of pressure on administrators and sales support, mainly due to mortgages becoming “increasingly complicated and more difficult to get through and that’s taking up quite a bit of extra time.”

“In protection that’s also taking longer to administer and get on the books,” he said.

“It’s mainly because of GPs [where] some of them have slowed down dramatically, although there are occasions where they’ve speeded up.

“But there’s quite a bit of pressure on the world of administration at the minute.”

 

Tighter underwriting

Regarding insurers and underwriting specifically, Walton acknowledged insurers have started asking more questions in relation to Covid-19 given its emergence.

“New questions have been added which has added a great deal of complexity as different providers are asking different questions, so certain cases are being delayed or postponed,” he continued.

“IP is trickier to get on the books because that’s the highest risk… so there has been some tightening there.

“What we’re hoping is that as this eventually gets under control that the underwriting will get easier.

“It hasn’t stopped business, we’re still writing thousands of policies a month, the vast majority still go on risk and from that point of view it is still business as usual, it’s just those small number of cases which can trip up on these extra Covid-19 questions.”

Walton also said the increased protection business conducted by MAB was a sign of improvements within the market for customers.

“Our protection business has moved up dramatically. On IP we’re writing 80 per cent more than we did a few years ago and it accounts for nearly 30 per cent of our business, so there’s definite moves to look at products outside typical life insurance,” he said.

“CI is booming, IP is definitely booming. Is there more we can do? Absolutely, there’s still too many mortgages which aren’t protected, but we’re going in the right direction.”

 

 

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