Lifesearch has applauded Legal & General's use of subject access requests (SARs) to obtain extra medical data and said it is seeing positive results for clients.
The advice firm has revealed that turnaround times for its L&G clients have been dropping and suggested that other insurers have been overly critical.
Legal & General is so far the only provider to admit using SARs instead of GP reports since the breakdown in the agreement between the ABI and British Medical Association and has come under criticism from many in the industry for doing so.
Last month Russ Whitworth, underwriting and claims director for protection at Legal & General, told COVER the insurer had been seeing positive results since fully introducing the process in November.
He also noted that it had found "very little resistance from GPs" with complaints at a similar level to those around GP reports.
This view is supported by Tom Baigrie, CEO of Lifesearch, who told COVER that the initial results it had were positive.
"Our experience so far is that our L&G turnaround times are dropping, so it's working for us as an adviser," he said.
"And bearing in mind we send dozens of policies a week to L&G and other insurers, what works for us probably works for the market.
"We can't really see a downside, provided one is sanguine about insurance companies propensity to mis-use data, and I'm inclined to trust underwriters to follow their commercial instincts and use data where appropriate, as opposed to reject people," he added.
Whitworth also addressed this point in his interview with COVER, acknowledging that providers often received extraneous data on other medical request forms, suggesting any positive data for the customer would be used in their favour, with negative data excluded.
Baigrie continued by noting the importance of finding a way to improve service levels for clients to get on risk.
"Protection underwriting has suffered delays in getting data back from GPs and a lot of different ways around this problem have been tried, many of them successfully such as tele interviewing," he said.
"But for a large remainder of clients where competitive premiums need detailed information from their GP, SARs seems to me to be much easier for the GP to do because its mechanistic not intellectual and it's a process that's got a backstop date so it can never go on and on - in theory.
"We've got many cases where the reason they've never gone on risk is because the client's GP just won't play ball.
"We have enormous sympathy with GPs but they have to play ball with this one and they can delegate it to a junior in their admin teams and they can get it out.
"So for GPs SARs is a good thing and for that reason alone it should be welcomed as an initiative," he added.
Baigrie concluded by questioning some of the public critics of those insurers taking on the new process, suggesting the criticisms needed to be used more "accurately and carefully" rather than the "vague" ones commonly cited.
"There's too much loose negative comment in our industry and it slows innovation and increases the risk of innovation to the innovators and I don't think that's a good thing," he said.
"I don't think many GPs see insurance company forms as a benefit to their business, but as a pain in the neck - and this reduces that pain in the neck.
"And I guess there will be a few providers trying it quietly too," he concluded.
