Beagle Street has launched its first two protection products into the intermediary market – life insurance and critical illness (CI) plans.
Health & Protection has key details of the products – which are available through the IPipeline, Iress and UnderwriteMe sourcing systems – and example pricing.
Both products are supported by added-value services including Reframe Cancer, Square Health’s remote GP service, Red Arc claims support, a will writing service and one hour of free legal advice.
The insurer’s claims service has Samaritans-trained handlers and pledges payment of valid claims within three working days of receiving the required evidence.
Beagle Street also holds PDG Claims Charter status and offers a Funeral Payment Pledge which will provide a £5,000 early payment to help with funeral expenses for valid claims for its policies and those through the partnership with Virgin Money.
The insurer said its pricing was designed to reflect individual risk more precisely and would support fairer outcomes for customers while giving advisers access to competitive terms across a broad range of cases.
For both products there is currently no further medical or financial underwriting, however Beagle Street told Health & Protection it is looking to develop this in the future, with a targeted approach to evidence.
As a result, maximum sums assured for both products are on a descending scale as age increases.
The insurer said suicide in the first 12 months was the only standard exclusion although there were specific exclusions within the individual definitions.
Customers will be covered once the application has been submitted although Beagle Street noted the areas where it does not offer manual underwriting yet.
Life insurance
The life product is available to customers aged 18 to 77 at entry and can run up to age 90, with terms of between five and 50 years.
Cover can be level, decreasing or increasing and is available on either a single or joint life basis.
It also includes guaranteed insurability options and optional waiver of premium.
The maximum cover limit is £1m for those aged up to 30 and descends to £25,000 by age 76 to 78.
Example pricing for a 40-year-old female, non-smoker seeking a 20-year term covering £100,000 would be £7.06 per month.
Critical illness
The critical illness product is available to customers aged 18 to 64 at entry and can run up to age 80, with terms of between five and 40 years.
Cover can be level, decreasing or increasing and is available on either a single or joint life basis and covers 23 conditions.
It offers guaranteed insurability options as well as optional total permanent disability cover and waiver of premiums.
Children’s cover is available as an optional extra, paying the lower of 25% of the main sum assured or £25,000.
The maximum cover limit is £500,000 for those aged up to 30 and descends to £75,000 by age 61 to 65.
Example pricing for a 40-year-old female, non-smoker seeking a 20-year term covering £50,000 would be £20.63 per month.
Income protection
When asked if it had plans to introduce an income protection product, Beagle Street said: “We’re excited to launch into the intermediary market, and this is the first stage of a multi-year roadmap, which includes the development of additional products.
“We will share more news on developments in due course.”
Pricing to ‘reflect individual risk’
Speaking at the launch event last night, OneFamily protection director Ryan Griffin (pictured) said the proposition had “underwriting and pricing based on precision, not on averages”.
Identifying advisers attending, he continued: “We built this for you. Every decision we made, every process we created, every conversation you have with our team is designed for this challenge from day one.
“Purpose built, simple propositions so you or your clients always know where you stand. Speed of decisions, so you and your clients get answers, not uncertainty.
“Precision in underwriting and pricing, so customer outcomes reflect their individual risk, not a mythical average or a price rounded up to maximize margin just because that’s how it’s always been done.
“And reliability, because we know that the most important thing that we can do is show up every time on every case. And this is just the start, there’s much, much more to come.”