OnePath trauma changes
Trauma insurance is becoming more popular with customers who realise they are far likelier to claim on it than their life policies, says OnePath.
Friday, August 23rd 2013, 7:22AM
General manger of adviser distribution Jeremy Nicoll said it was a product that advisers should be discussing with their clients. “It does provide a good amount of money to help customers when they do have one of these conditions… Customers understand they are more likely to claim. Everyone has a friend who has contracted some form of cancer.”
OnePath has just released enhancements to its trauma cover, improving a number of definitions, introducing new conditions, including new partial payments and removing the stand-down period for a number of partial payments.
Trauma policies now cover burns of limited exposure, revise the definition of cancer so that carcinoma in situ can be anywhere in the body and allow for partial payouts in cases where people do not meet the full conditions.
It is also offering consistency across its business assurance and business assurance extra products.
Nicoll said the changes were a response to adviser and client feedback and as a result of an internal review. “Sometimes when we’re getting claims through we see that we could make the wording clearer to result in a better outcome for clients.”
He said most of the claims OnePath received related to cancer and it was important to clarify grey areas around that. “We want to make it more explicit so that customers and advisers know where they stand.”
It has been suggested that companies should move towards more level premiums to improve sustainability.
But Nicoll said that was hard to do with trauma products. OnePath has some five-year level guaranteed premiums. “Trauma is an evolving product. To make it sustainable, it’s important that we don’t have it level for a long time.”
There were constant advances in diagnosis for trauma events that increased the frequency of payouts, he said. “That’s why we’ve got to be careful and recognise that trend is likely to continue and we can’t guarantee premiums for too long.”
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