Partners Life tweaks policies

Partners Life has rolled out a series of product changes and benefit improvements for its policies.

Wednesday, December 11th 2019, 11:22AM

The full list can be seen here.

They include a new newborn benefit that pays 25% of a parent's trauma sum insured if a child is born with one of a range of conditions, including blindness or deafness; a new counselling benefit for TPD and trauma cover; and an increase to the maximum sum insured for terminal illness cover.

Early childhood education and motor vehicle lease costs have been added to eligible expenses for household expenses cover and full-time work has been redefined as 25 hours a week.

Managing director Naomi Ballantyne said Partners Life products had always rated highly but it kept an eye on the market and claims being made to identify opportunities for improvement.

She said, with significant system updates rolled out this year, Partners had banked all the things it would normally have implemented and was now introducing the changes en masse.

Some of the changes had required the introduction of its new underwriting software MUM.

The intensive care treatment requirements for a trauma payout have also been changed.

At the moment, to qualify, someone has to be on ventilation and intubated for at least three consecutive days or receive intensive care for at least five.

That will be replaced with a scoring system based on severity.

Ballantyne said there had been issues of unfairness, such as when people were admitted to a hospital that did not have an intensive care unit. The new system allowed for a more objective assessment of the situation.

Russell Hutchinson, of Quotemonster, said each of the individual items was a small change but in sum they were significant.

"I particularly liked the change to the intensive care benefit, as an example, as I saw a particularly unfortunate claim where the client failed to meet the strict definition, but should have qualified. This change makes that unfortunate circumstance less likely.”

Tags: Life insurance Partners Life Trauma