The ‘Designed by Doctors’ definitions cover conditions such as heart attacks, multiple sclerosis and total permanent disability.
The changes have been made to ensure the best patient outcomes by providing clarity on wordings and aligning it with medical practice.
After consulting with an independent committee of doctors and epidemiologists, Protection Guru updated 10 critical illness conditions so the wording would be understandable to medical professionals.
Ian McKenna, founder of Protection Guru, said: “By producing our example wordings for clarity and accuracy, we can offer insurers and reinsurers impartial guidance on keeping their policies in line with contemporary medical practice. Since we launched our original critical illness benchmarking in 2017, we have been able to work with many individual insurers to simplify and improve wordings for consumers. This is the next phase of this work through which we are looking to raise standards across the industry.”
“It is crucial to recognise we are not seeking to encourage adoption of a single or standard critical illness wording. That would be counterproductive. Stimulating competition is core to our objectives. We are, however, looking to demonstrate that wordings can be better than they are today.
“As critical illness policies were originally invented by a doctor, the late Marius Barnard, we see reengaging with medical professionals as a very natural step to protect consumers.”
Critical illness wordings were first benchmarked in 1991 by the National Federation of independent financial advisers, which subsequently became the IFA Association and IFA Portfolio.
Adviser firms using the Protection Guru Pro service will next year be able to use a ‘Designed by Doctors’ assessment.
