Legal & General (L&G) says it is now making immediate decisions on 90% of protection applications referred to its 'little t' tele-underwriting unit.
It says this represents an increase of 24% over the last four months.
The group's 'little t' team of nurses and underwriters carries out telephone interviews to gather further information about application disclosures, which reduces the need for doctors' reports (GPRs).
The growing importance of tele-underwriting in the UK is being reflected in the falling number of insurers using GPRs at application stage.
Russ Whitworth, L&G underwriting and claims director for protection, says: "We have in-sourced our ‘little t' team and tweaked our processes to get better information from the call.
"For nine out of ten clients our underwriters are able to look at that information and make a decision straight away."
