AXA Sun Life, SMA Pegasus and Swiss Life have been awarded top marks for their critical illness prod...
AXA Sun Life, SMA Pegasus and Swiss Life have been awarded top marks for their critical illness product offerings by COVER magazine, in its COVERmarks initiative.
AXA Sun Life's Lifecare, Pegasus' Business Assurance and Swiss Life's Solutions were the only IFA critical illness products to achieve all five shields, which represent standards for breadth and quality of cover.
The five levels are based on comprehensiveness of cover, compliance with the ABI model wordings, availability of an own occupation definition for permanent total disability, flexibility and innovation.
Assessment for the benchmarks was based on a combination of providers' responses to surveys sent out by COVER, filtering using The Research Department's database and the views of an independent panel of judges comprising both reassurers and financial advisers.
These three plans met the stringent criteria on all five levels and, according to the judges, represent the highest standards in the CI market.
Lifecare is a non-qualifying unit-linked whole of life policy that can be split into up to four separate policies for added flexibility.
The Pegasus Business Assurance Plan can be written on a term or whole of life basis and the judges were impressed by its innovative features such as critical illness buy-back and a long term care conversion option.
Solutions is a term-based range allowing a wide variety of cover options and includes a life cover buy-back option one year after a critical illness claim has been made.
A further 11 products received four shields.
Full details of the COVERmarks criteria and results can be found in the supplement at the centre of this month's issue.
