Aviva has made a series of changes to its individual protection underwriting process including increasing its medical evidence age and sum assured thresholds and relaxing its Covid policy.
On individual income protection (IP) products the insurer is also broadening the availability of a four-week deferred period across the vast majority of coverable occupations.
Aviva said it was making the changes to drive higher rates of immediate decisions for applications and speed up new business writing for intermediaries.
Raising non-medical limits
Aviva’s non-medical limits for the age and sum assured thresholds above which medical evidence is automatically required have been increased.
For example, under the new thresholds for someone in the age range of 31 to 35 at their next birthday, it will now accept up to £1m of life cover, up to £500,000 of critical illness cover and up to £6,250 of income protection cover with no automatic medical evidence.
A number of key underwriting rules on the Aviva Life Protection Solutions (ALPS) platform have also been adjusted “to help refine and optimise automated decisions on protection applications”.
The insurer said it estimated this will improve straight-through processing rates by around 1.5% as around 8 in 10 of its individual protection applications receive automatic underwriting decisions without the need for medical evidence.
Aviva is extending its relaxed manual underwriting Covid stance on to the ALPS platform meaning that life and critical illness terms can now be automatically offered for customers who have disclosed Covid symptoms, once the symptoms have resolved.
Short deferred period on IP
A four-week deferred period is being added for the vast majority of occupations on its income protection product range, as the insurer noted that self-employed customers receive no sick pay and others may just be reliant on Statutory Sick Pay of £96.35 a week.
It is available on the Income Protection+ and Living Costs Protection products and previously was not available on a number of occupations such as builders and factory workers.
Existing individual income protection customers can also opt to reduce their deferred period to a minimum of four weeks, subject to underwriting.
Robert Morrison, chief underwriting officer for health and protection at Aviva, said: “We continue to look for ways to make protection insurance more accessible to the broadest range of customers and by improving our non-medical limits and improving the availability of income protection insurance we are delivering on our commitment.
“We also want to make it as easy as possible for our intermediary partners to place business for their clients and by continuing to optimise our quantum analytics capability we are on track to achieve an 85% straight through processing rate later this year.”
