Product news and updates from February – everything you need to know

After a slow couple of years, understandable because of the Covid pandemic (increasingly feeling like a distant memory with other global events now dominating the news), new product launches and updates are coming in thick and fast now. As the three insights referred to below highlight, insurers are making some genuine improvements to their products, as well as launching new propositions to offer more client choice.

As ever, we aim to bring you the most detailed adviser-focused analysis, were appropriate coupled with a comparative assessment across the broader market. In this round-up we bring you all of our product update coverage from February.

British Friendly Mutual Benefits Updates

In February British Friendly were the latest insurer to announce changes & improvements to their package of additional support benefits. Mutual Benefits was overhauled with the adoption of Square Health’s Clinic in a Pocket app, giving clients access to unlimited virtual GP appointments and a range of other services.

In our insight we examined an detail what those changes mean for the British Friendly proposition, but also how they compare with the rest of the market. The switch to unlimited virtual GP appointments is a big positive and the smartphone app based approach to accessing such benefits is something we support and encourage all insurers to adopt. Read more

New 'My Sick Pay' Product from Holloway Friendly

In a move designed to simplify, as well as broaden their income protection cover, Holloway Friendly recently unveiled a completely new policy: My Sick Pay. This product replaces their Purely, Short-Term and One2Protect products and includes a number of new features for Holloway, including minimum benefit guarantees, an ‘own job’ incapacity definition and the option for guaranteed premiums. One particularly interesting innovation of the new product is Holloway Friendly’s approach to the policy literature, which they have simplified by removing a lot of the jargon and legal language usually found in these documents.

Our insight includes a detailed overview and independent review of the new product, as well as an assessment on the quality of the new literature. Read more

AIG Makes Changes to Relevant Life Continuation Option

AIG recently made changes and improvements to their Relevant Life Insurance plan, specifically the continuation options and whether the terminal illness benefit is maintained when the continuation option is exercised. Whilst not something AIG officially announced (comms were sent to clients and advisers), this change was worthy of coverage and so we published a detailed insight examining continuation options across the whole market.

The specifics of AIGs improvements were to change the stance on terminal illness benefit when clients ‘continue’ their Relevant Life Plan and switch it to an individually owned personal policy. Previously AIG removed the terminal illness benefit, so this was a fairly important move and significantly they’ve now re-instated the terminal illness benefit for existing clients that had already exercised the continuation option. Our insight covers the full market, with further details on how continuation options work and how other insurers treat the terminal illness benefit. Read more