Royal Liver plans to offer guaranteed critical illness (CI) insurance from Q4 this year. Andy Milbu...
Royal Liver plans to offer guaranteed critical illness (CI) insurance from Q4 this year.
Andy Milburn, IFA market manager at Royal Liver, said the provider had initially decided not to roll out guaranteed rates as it wanted to focus on its online systems, but it had now chosen to start offering the option after the market had seen strong demand for guaranteed CI rates.
"Now that there is greater capacity for guaranteed CI rates in the UK, it seemed timely to introduce guaranteed CI rates as the next improvement to our protection menu products," Milburn said. "This will plug the gap in our range," he continued.
However, Royal Liver has not yet decided whether the guaranteed offering will come with the Association of British Insurers' new CI definitions or if it will wait until the April 2007 deadline.
"We haven't decided what to do yet. In one way, we should really go with it now since it would be more in line with treating customers fairly. However, a lot of IFAs don't know these changes are happening yet and implementing the updated definitions could add confusion," he added.