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The central idea of the Financial Conduct Authority’s new Consumer Duty initiative is that clients should receive “good outcomes”.

When it comes to life and health insurance protection, this is likely to mean that firms will need to take a ‘holistic’ approach, meaning that they will need to consider all of a client’s potential protection needs, rather than perhaps thinking just about life protection in one or two areas.

Similar sentiments have been expressed in several recent trade press articles.

This means considering not only life insurance for the mortgage balance, but also critical illness insurance, as well as some form of income protection or payment protection insurance, as there is a much greater risk of becoming ill during your mortgage term as there is of passing away.

It also means considering all potential protection needs, rather than perhaps just concentrating on life cover.

If an authorised firm decides it doesn’t want to get involved in protection advice, then it has the opportunity to establish an arrangement with a partner firm, whereby insurance leads are passed on to this other firm.

How can Moneysworth help?

In the new Consumer Duty world, Moneysworth is able to give advice in all areas of protection, including:

  • Repaying a mortgage on death
  • Repaying a mortgage on diagnosis of a critical illness
  • Maintaining income in the event of ill health
  • Providing a sum for family to replace lost income should the client pass away
  • Providing a sum for care costs and other bills on diagnosis of a critical illness
  • Providing a sum to pay for funeral expenses
  • Providing a sum, payable on death, to mitigate inheritance tax liabilities
  • Replacing income should the client become a full-time carer

One of our particular specialisms is arranging suitable cover for individuals who may otherwise have found it difficult to obtain protection elsewhere

We have helped large numbers of clients whose circumstances may be a little unusual. For example, they might:

  • Reside outside of the UK
  • Have mental or physical health conditions
  • Have a higher BMI. 

If you wish to find out more about arranging suitable insurance for yourself, then contact Moneysworth today to find out how we can help you.

What if you are a financial services firm?

Moneysworth is well placed to become your protection specialist partner firm in the brave new world of the Consumer Duty.

Since our foundation in 2003, we have become an established and respected name in the protection sector, with numerous satisfied clients and several industry awards to our name.

We invite you to place your trust in Moneysworth’s highly experienced team, who have many years’ experience of the protection market and of helping clients just like yours to achieve fantastic outcomes.
If you want to discuss the opportunities offered by introducing business to Moneysworth, get in touch with us today.

Screengrab of the new "Email only - no phone calls" option in our Get a Quote form

In March last year, Moneysworth was proudly involved in launching a new form of Life Insurance for people with a history of mental health problems. The new option was designed to offer a wider opportunity for obtaining cover at an affordable price, and has achieved very positive results.

During the trial period, 75% of clients who applied obtained Life Insurance. These were people who would have otherwise been declined any cover at all, or offered cover at a much higher price.

We know from our own conversations with clients in this situation that talking about mental ill health can be uncomfortable and upsetting for them. Our team always treat clients with care and sensitivity, and we’re always keen to find new ways to improve how we engage with anyone who asks us to help them find cover.

Learning from the experiences of people who have struggled to obtain cover

The Mental Health UK charity recent published their “Affording Protection: Mental Health and Insurance” survey report, which reveals some interesting statistics about how the Life Insurance industry handles applicants who have mental health conditions.

The survey asked people with mental health conditions about their experiences of trying to apply for Life Insurance. The following statistics in the report underline what many clients have told us about their experiences before they come to us for help:

  • 31% didn’t think they would get cover because of their mental health problem.
  • Only 23% of people would feel confident about challenging an insurer if they were denied insurance all together, or if they were offered unsatisfactory cover terms.

There was one statistic in the report which particularly caught our attention:

31% believed it would be too distressing to discuss their mental health problem with an insurer

We usually prefer to talk to our clients on the phone so we can fully understand their circumstances and requirements. This helps us to ensure we can research the whole of the market to find competitive prices for the client.

But we also fully appreciate why some people don’t wish to discuss their health over the phone.

Our goal is to increase access to Life Insurance for people with mental health conditions, so it’s important all clients feel comfortable with the way we help them find cover.

With that in mind, we’ve set up a new option for clients who have a mental health condition to apply for Life Insurance without the need for any phone calls. This process has been arranged with one carefully selected insurer who is also able to deal with clients via email only.

We’ve modified our Get a Quote form to offer a new “Email only – no phone calls” option to people with a mental health condition. Clients who choose this new contact preference are not asked to provide a phone number, so they can be fully assured that they won’t receive any phone calls from Moneysworth or the insurer.

It’s important to note that, by choosing this option, Moneysworth will not able to research the whole market to establish if the policy from the insurer used for this option is the most suitable cover for the client.

We’re well placed to help people with health conditions who struggle to find Life Insurance

Since Moneysworth started in 2003, our award-winning team has helped many people with mental health conditions to find suitable Life Insurance.

Andrew Wilkinson and Tim Boddy, Moneysworth’s founding partners, have personal experience of some of the key issues involved. It’s one of the reasons that we’re so dedicated to helping each and every client find the most suitable result.

Access to insurance: people crossing a bridge over a maze

For several years, Moneysworth has been involved in a campaign to radically improve access to Life Insurance for people with health conditions. Now a growing number of large insurers, industry organisations and charities are committed to improving access to Life Insurance.

As of yesterday, a manifesto has been submitted to Parliament which sets out how people with health conditions should be offered greatly improved access to insurance. This is the culmination of a huge, focussed effort from many industry stakeholders, and we are proud to be a part of this project.

The result is a comprehensive agreement which will help make protection insurance more widely available. It achieves this by setting out principles for participating companies to follow when they are unable to offer cover to a client.

From the consumer’s point of view, it will mean they will be given help with finding specialist assistance to help them continue their search for cover. The industry term for this is signposting, because the insurer directs the client to other organisations who may be able to help them find the cover they need.

The agreement, which is voluntary, has been signed by insurers such as Legal & General, Lloyds Banking Group, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows, plus several key adviser firms, industry groups and associations. In time, we anticipate many more insurers, advisers and industry organisations will also participate.

Moneysworth was asked to be involved in developing the agreement because of our expertise in helping clients with health conditions, assisting with their Life Insurance needs – and, in particular, our breadth of knowledge about the many obstacles people face.

Many people believe that they are uninsurable

It is true that some people are uninsurable, however many people are more insurable than they think.

Often people just assume that insurance is not possible. For example, sometimes customers who have had a heart attack tell us they have always assumed that, due to their heart attack, they are uninsurable. The same goes for many people with other health conditions.

Many wrongly assume that if one insurance company declines their application, so will all the others.

Typically, the application process can be lengthy, as insurers often need to obtain medical evidence from a doctor’s surgery. To get a decline decision at the end of this process can be demotivating.

However, the length of the whole process is normal and other insurers may decide to offer cover – so the key message is “Don’t give up”.

With the new agreement announced yesterday, hopefully many people who have had an application for protection insurance declined will now be able to find a suitable specialist broker like Moneysworth.

Moneysworth has helped many people with health problems to find suitable Life Insurance.

This is because we’re well placed to help people in this situation. We have detailed knowledge of the Life Insurance market, and we have in-house underwriting expertise, which helps as we gather appropriate medical information to enable us to approach different insurers across the market, in our search for solutions on behalf of our clients.

Moneysworth has over fifteen years of success in finding cover for people with mental and physical health conditions.

Examples of Life Insurance prices we found for clients with health conditions:

  • 48 year old, non-smoker, previously suffered a heart attack
    Required £80,000 of level life cover over 20 years
    Standard rate for someone with no health problems: £17.91 (for comparison)
    We researched the market and found three insurers who declined to offer cover – and nine insurers who were willing to offer cover, with prices ranging from £70.59 down to just £44.78 per month.
  • 22 year old, non-smoker, history of mental health issues (overdose and OCD)
    Required £125,000 of decreasing life cover over 23 years.
    Standard rate for someone with no health problems: £4.64 (for comparison)
    We researched the market and found three insurers who declined to offer cover – and seven insurers willing to offer cover, with prices ranging from £78.22 down to just £7.37 per month.
  • 29 year old, non-smoker, with a heart condition (born with hole in heart & leaking valve)
    Required £260,000 of decreasing life cover over 25 years.
    Standard rate for someone with no health problems: £7.77 (for comparison)
    We researched the market and found eight insurers who declined to offer cover – and three insurers willing to offer cover, with prices ranging from £86.17 down to just £22.65 per month.

We don’t charge clients any fees to search the insurance market, so it won’t cost you a penny to ask us to fully explore your Life Insurance options.

January 22nd, 2020

Posted In: access to insurance, life insurance

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