Norwich Union Healthcare (NUH) has relaunched its income protection plan to make it more suited to m...
Norwich Union Healthcare (NUH) has relaunched its income protection plan to make it more suited to mortgage protection.
New features on Safeguard will include guaranteed insurability options, a wider choice of deferred periods and a new range of benefits such as death, retirement and hospital benefits.
Commenting on the announcement, Nick Homer income protection product marketing manager at NUH, said that the product needed to follow the lead of critical illness. "If income protection is to become a mass market product it needs to be recognised as a good mortgage protection product. We have now added greater flexibility to the product with a guaranteed insurability option which will allow policyholders to increase cover around their mortgage, but also on birth of a child, marriage, salary increase or the attainment of a professional qualification."
NUH is also introducing 56 week and 112 week deferred periods enabling borrowers to dovetail short-term mortgage payment protection insurance with income protection without overlapping cover. "This will allow IFAs to sell income protection as an extended warranty to MPPI," said Homer.
A hospital benefit of £75 per night will now be offered to policyholders on all policies and a retirement benefit of three times the monthly benefit will be paid to all claimants that have been in receipt of benefits for a year before their policy expiry date. A lump sum death benefit will also be paid to claimants that die within the first year of the claim.
For the first time the policy will now also include a career break option. "This will allow policyholders to switch to housepersons' cover for five years and be reinstated to their previous cover without underwriting and for the same premium," said Homer. The maximum benefit for policyholders with housepersons' cover has also been increased from £10,000 a year to £12,000.
Following the merger of NU and CGU the new company has also rebranded CGU's critical illness policies, discontinuing the old NU range. The decision to retain the CGU CI products was taken because it was felt that CGU was the more price competitive of the two. The company will continue to use the business administration systems of both parties.
Willie Mowatt, head of retirement and protection propositions at NU, said: "We have focused on the key critical illnesses because we felt that we had to make sure they were covered. By getting the basics right we can maintain our position as a volume producer."
The CGU term assurance product currently has the top market share and the merged company will target its existing market with future developments. The next step is to improve delivery and accessibility online.
