Legal & General has signed a deal to expand its 'little t' tele-underwriting service. The venture, ...
Legal & General has signed a deal to expand its 'little t' tele-underwriting service.
The venture, with Primecare Primary Care, said to be 'a provider of integrated out-of-hours healthcare' will replicate L&G's current tele-underwriting model, this time on a larger scale. Nurses and doctors from Primecare will call customers at home to confidentially follow up on disclosures made during the application process.
L&G says the deal will give them the ability to deal with four more medical conditions over the telephone, effective immediately, and it expects this number to increase by the end of the year.
Russ Whitworth, underwriting and claims director at the provider, said: "We see the benefit of using telephone-based interviewing to cover medical history because people feel comfortable talking with a medical professional over the phone. It allows us to get a clear picture of someone's medical background, which reduces the need for us to request general practitioner reports. This means applications are processed more quickly and the likelihood of non-disclosure is reduced."
The insurer said the new service will not replace the medical underwriting questions on an application but will follow-up disclosures on forms such as 'heart murmur' or 'blood pressure'. The provider hoped this expansion of its 'little t' tele-underwriting, which began in 2004, would not only reduce the time it takes for an underwriting decision to be made but the period before a policy is issued.
