Holloway Friendly tipped to increase market share
Holloway Friendly has released the details of its new income protection (IP) product.
The policy contains a number of additional online services including proposal, commission and policy tracking, and a document library where forms or sales aids can be downloaded.
Under the policy terms, all occupations pay the same rate, guaranteed, and all bar occupational risk four obtain 'own occupation' cover. Overall, one adviser told Cover, the Holloway Friendly product "looks very good", is cheaper than LV= for higher risk occupations but more expensive for lower risk ones. The adviser added that the provider was competing, alongside LV=, with other IP companies Pioneer and Cirencester, and looked set to increase its market share as long as the underwriting was "tolerable".
In other news, the number of individual IP policies sold within the UK rose by 11% last year, increasing from 118,000 to 130,000 between 2007 and 2008. The value of new premiums increased by £4m to £55m, an increase of 7.2%.
Peter Le Beau, co-chairman of the IP Task Force, said: "It is to be hoped that 2007's figure was a low water mark in IP production. Last year, apart from the rise in sales, there were a number of new product innovations from companies like Fortis and LV=, which show that a lot of attention is being paid to innovation in this market. We welcome this and believe it will continue, particularly given the uncertainty over payment protection insurance at the present time."
