Ciexpert has applauded Vitality for its simplification it has implemented with the roll out of its new policy launch.
According to Ciexpert, one of the unrelenting protection themes of the past 15 years has been the number of options and the level of complexity within the various Vitality serious illness plans.
Now with these new changes, processes have become easier for advisers.
Alan Lakey, director at CIExpert, said: “Numerous subscribers have told us that they simply cannot understand these plans and the myriad options within them.
“As a result, they choose to ignore the plans regardless of the quality.
“Today’s very welcome announcement by Vitality, that it has redesigned its plans into plans SIC 1X, SIC 2X and SIC 3X, has remedied many of the problems that repelled these advisers and bring them more into line with the standard critical illness template.”
He added: “In simple terms the new plans might conveniently be described as of the Entry Level, Core and Enhanced variety.
“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.
“The new plans resolve many of these 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.”
Lakey continued: “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 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.
“CIExpert has carried out extensive research and development of the platform over the last 3 years to be able to incorporate the new plans onto our platform in a way that we believe will enable advisers to comprehend the plans and, where appropriate, compare them against the CIC plans in a meaningful way.”
He concluded: “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.
“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.”
