CIExpert is now including Vitality serious illness plans on its comparison service for the first time.
CIExpert director Alan Lakey (pictured) noted the move was in response to adviser feedback and followed the simplification of Vitality’s serious illness cover (SIC) announced yesterday.
Following launch, VitalityLife managing director Justin Taurog also revealed Vitality is aiming to be a top three player in the income protection market as a result of the relaunch of the protection offering.
Lakey said the organisation had been carrying out extensive research and development over the last three years to incorporate Vitality’s serious illness plans in a way that will enable advisers to “comprehend the plans and, where appropriate to compare them against the critical illness cover plans in a meaningful way”.
“We have worked closely with Vitality to achieve this and when the new range of plans are released we will be launching a new upgrade shortly after, including the various historic plans dating back to 2007,” Lakey said.
“This has been a request from many of our advisers for some time and so we are delighted to be able to finally make this available at no additional cost for advisers.”
Advisers did not understand Vitality products
Providing his reaction to Vitality’s changes, Lakey revealed a number of CIExpert subscribers said they simply could not understand the insurer’s serious illness cover plans and consequently the decsion was taken to ignore the products regardless of quality.
But Lakey explained the redesign of the plans into plans SIC 1X, SIC 2X and SIC 3X, had remedied many of the problems that repelled advisers – bringing them more into line with the standard critical illness template.
“In simple terms the new plans might conveniently be described as of the entry level, core and enhanced variety,” Lakey continued.
“With the previous range of plans advisers could choose to add on the booster and protected status, select optimised and non-optimised premiums, plus a whole host of other options.
“This also impaired the adviser’s ability to understand the range of quotations provided via the various portals. Again, this was a negative that resulted in a lower take-up of plans than would otherwise have been the case.
However, Lakey noted the overhaul resolved many of the difficulties.
“The SIC 1X is purely a severity product where each claim either reduces the sum insured or ends cover if the claim is due to a 100% severity payment. The plan includes severity conditions A to D,” he said.
“The SIC 2X & SIC 3X differ significantly from the entry level product in that the severity payments do not reduce the sum assured, in effect making them comparable with additional payment conditions.
“Multiple payments can be made on these policies for all severity levels including the 100% severity payment, so it provides the possibility of paying cumulative claims up to either 200% or 300% of the residual cover at the time of the claim.
“Both plans also increase the severity level of a number of main conditions to 100% that also serves to make these plans more comparable with a critical illness plan.
“The SIC 2X covers severity conditions A to E whereas SIC 3X extends to conditions A to G, providing a very broad condition coverage to compete with high quality critical illness plans,” he concluded.