Guardian will expand its product range in the coming weeks with the launch of a low-cost life cover, ‘Life Essentials’.
With this launch, Guardian will offer customers a choice between Life Protection, its existing premier life cover, and Life Essentials, a low-cost life cover for clients whose priority is price.
Guardian made this change to better meet the needs of a wider range of clients, including those impacted by the higher cost of living, first-time buyers, and clients who place less value on a feature-rich product.
Life Essentials includes a dual life approach, Premium Waiver (with a 26-week deferred period which pays out on ‘own job’), and optional children’s critical illness protection.
However, in order make the product more affordable, some features are reduced; most notably, the product has a different terminal illness definition to Life Protection.
This is now defined as: “Being terminally ill and, in the opinion of your attending UK consultant, your illness has no known cure or has progressed to the point where it can’t be cured and is expected to lead to your death within 12 months.”
This contrasts with the enhanced terminal illness definition on Life Protection which does not require the 12-month prognosis for incurable stage four cancer, motor neurone disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or Parkinson-plus syndromes.
For both Life Essentials and Life Protection, the policy terms and conditions state that Guardian will pay out on the definite diagnosis of the policyholder’s treating UK consultant.
Jacqui Gillies (pictured), marketing and proposition director at Guardian, said: “We’re delighted to announce we’ll soon be offering a choice of life covers, enabling advisers and their clients to select between our low-cost Life Essentials and our existing premier Life Protection.
“The time is right to be offering this choice; the higher cost of living means that many clients simply have less budget available for protection.
“It also broadens our appeal within client segments traditionally focused on affordability, helping us reach a wider market and accelerating our distribution growth.”
She added: “We’re committed to fair value and that’s why many of the features we’re known for remain in our low cost option, including our dual life approach, Premium Waiver, Payout Planner, Guardian Anytime and HALO.
“But as you’d expect there are also some important differences, most noticeably to the terminal illness definition, which we’ve aligned with the standard market definition to keep the cost affordable for more people.
“We believe that by offering this choice we’re supporting advisers to better meet the needs of a wider spectrum of clients – so whether their priority is quality or price, we now have a life cover to suit both.”
