Protection Guru Pro has introduced additional functionality enabling advisers to review their clients’ existing critical illness policy against the range of alternative contracts using expert medical opinions.
The service provides an analysis of available policies considering price, cover and policy wording.
The firm said its benchmarking service had been developed in collaboration with medical experts to enable advisers to assess what represents best value for each client, bespoke to individual circumstances.
The analysis includes a list of all policies not chosen with a rationale for exclusion. It also makes it possible for advisers to compare historic policies to current day policies.
Where a condition covered by the existing policy will be excluded in any alternative policies, this will be highlighted in the analysis report to the adviser and consumer.
Niki Cooke, chief revenue officer at Protection Guru Pro, said: “Many advisers come across clients that have existing critical illness plans in place. There is a huge difference between old and new plans.
“Historic plans may provide better cover for some conditions. Early policies were far less restrictive around some diseases but equally only covered a limited number of illnesses and with conditions that can be hard to meet.
“New plans are generally more comprehensive but exclude some illnesses that have become far easier to treat. Replacing critical illness policies can be fraught with risk if you do not conduct thorough analysis of an existing plan and any new one.
“Critical illness policies can use complex medical terminology in their definitions, so we believe qualified medical professionals are best placed to assess the full implications of wordings. We are proud to be the only provider in the market, offering this extra level of diligence,” Cooke added.
Ian McKenna, founder of Protection Guru Pro, (pictured) said: “Using independent medical practitioners to review existing policies is also an industry first. They consider every last full stop and comma of each wording so advisers can make recommendations in complete confidence.“
Sarah Fox, associate director at The Merrigan-Reis Partnership, added: “We are seeing more and more clients, opting for better plans, rather than the cheapest, which is a great way to demonstrate Consumer Duty compliance, even before the new rules come in.
“In the past where a client had an existing critical illness plan, it was challenging to know if they should be replaced.
“Having access to a tool where doctors have reviewed all the historic and new policy wordings gives us huge confidence and certainty in knowing we are making the right recommendation.”