Legal & General’s (L&G’s) Retail Protection business has introduced a series of product enhancements aimed at ensuring customers are better protected.
As part of the updates, L&G’s Critical Illness Extra and Children’s Critical Illness Extra plans will now benefit from an improved additional payment amount of 100% (up to the value of £35,000 for Critical Illness Extra and £40,000 for Children’s Critical Illness Extra).
Children’s Critical Illness Extra has also been updated to cover additional conditions including Edwards’ syndrome, Patau syndrome, and the surgical repair of an atrial or ventricular septal defect.
For income protection, L&G will pay the customer’s monthly benefit even if their income has decreased by the time they make a valid claim, if the difference between the settled amount and the policy sum assured is less than 10%.
In addition, the wording has been simplified in policy documents and annual reminders will be sent to customers encouraging them to check their policies.
L&G’s quote validity period will now be extended from 90 days to 120 days to provide customers with greater certainty for a longer period of time and is particularly beneficial given the increasing timelines associated with mortgage completions.
To help safeguard against the impacts of inflation, and provide more flexibility, L&G is also giving customers with increasing cover (indexation) the option to decline increasing their cover up to three consecutive times before the benefit is removed.
This change will apply to all new applications for indexed products, with plans to extend this to existing customers in the near future.
Julie Godley, director – intermediary, retail protection at L&G, said: “These enhancements reflect our ongoing commitment to the intermediary market – we’re committed to delivering great value and positive outcomes for our advisers and their clients.
“Importantly these updates to our proposition are based on valuable feedback from both consumers and advisers.
“By prioritising their needs, we aim to offer innovative solutions that truly make a difference.”
