Scot Wids pays over £1bn in claims since 2000

Scottish Widows has paid £1.15bn in life and critical illness (CI) claims since January 2000 equating to over £2m each week.

During 2010 the provider paid 90.4% of CI claims received, with 2% declined due to non-disclosure and 7.6% due to the claim not meeting any of its definitions.

In total more than 30,800 life and critical illness claims have been paid since 2000 with life claims totalling over £728m, or £1.27m on average every week.

It also paid £426m, or £744,000 per week, for critical illness claims.

Cancer remained the most common cause of claim for both life (54%) and CI (59.9%), followed by heart related illness (16% for life, 20.3% for CI).

Split by gender, cancer was the reason for a life claim in 64% of cases for females, and 47% for males, while heart related claims accounted for 8% of cases for females and 21% for males.

The average age of a claimant for both was 55 years.

For critical illness, among men, 46.1% of claims made were for cancer, 34.9% for a heart related illness and 9.8% for stroke. However more than three-quarters (77.7%) of claims among women were for cancer, 5.5% for a heart related illness and 5.1% for stroke.

The average male claimant age was 49 years and 46 for females.

Clive Allison, market director at Scottish Widows, believes the UK is still hugely underinsured but recent developments have helped the sector's reputation.

"The industry has come a long way over the last few years to raise awareness of the importance of having adequate protection in place and confidence among consumers that life companies will pay out when making a claim has increased," he said.

"This is due to a number of factors including the ABI's code of conduct on non-disclosure introduced in 2008 and greater emphasis on simplifying the process when making a claim."