Vitality is removing the majority of the underwriting restrictions that were put in place at the height of the pandemic due to progress made with the UK vaccination programme and a decrease in Covid infection and mortality rates.
The group revealed its automated underwriting rules and pre-underwriting quote tool, Spectra, has been updated to remove restrictions placed on the maximum ratings that could be offered on a number of chronic conditions which were thought to be at an additional increased risk owing to Covid.
Vitality will now be offering its normal maximum ratings for these applications.
Restrictions placed on some older lives, mainly those aged 65 and over will now also be removed in most instances, though maximum cover limits and ratings will remain at the highest levels of cover.
The insurer added that it expects the move will affect relatively few applications.
Vitality director of underwriting and claims John Downes told Health & Protection the group was lifting the restrictions as it was happy with progress made with the vaccination rollout.
“We’re happy and can see the vaccine rollout is proceeding very, very well so we would expect transmission rates within the community to drop quite a bit. We saw no Covid deaths yesterday and we can see the R number is getting under control.
“There is some doubt about that, that we might be in for a third wave after the 21 June, but we’re confident enough that the rates we’re seeing now and the impact of the vaccines are sufficient to reduce the risk to more acceptable levels as it was pretty much pre-Covid.”
Aviva, LV= and Royal London have all moved to remove Covid underwriting restrictions since April
Downes also told Health & Protection about Vitality’s serious illness cover offering and dealing with claims emanating from cases of severe or critical cases of Covid, where long-term damage has been done to the body and its organs.
The insurer noted that as it paid out based on severity of illness, it can cover conditions at an earlier stage, and more conditions overall, including some conditions closely associated with complications from severe Covid.
This includes pulmonary embolisms – estimated to occur in around one third of Covid patients admitted to intensive care.
“Our serious illness cover is quite unique in the market in terms of severity benefits,” Downes said.
“We will pay out for conditions sometimes at lower levels, so for example, some of the side effects of the vaccines have been blood clots and lower level conditions such as blood clots on the lung where we would have paid out for those conditions – you didn’t need complete lung failure – we would have paid out for those.”