Fidelity Life drops the jargon, boosts adviser support

Changes to customer documentation, dropping industry jargon from policies and revised wordings are some of the new features Fidelity Life is introducing to make life easier for its advisers and customers.

Monday, November 29th 2021, 4:39PM

by Matthew Martin

According to an industry update recently circulated by the insurer, its staff have spent a lot of time speaking to customers and advisers and worked through some improvements which they are ready to start rolling out.

"We’re making things easier to understand. To support our goal of delivering good customer outcomes, we’ve revised a number of our customer documents to remove unnecessary jargon and simplify the language so it’s easier to understand."

For example, changing "sum assured" to "sum insured", "date of commencement" to "start date" and "life assurance" to "life cover", to name just a few.

Fidelity is making enhancements to its CPI option and Indexation option, by only applying CPI or Indexation increases at a policy's second anniversary.

"Currently, if an increase is made to an existing cover that has CPI or Indexation in the six months before policy anniversary, the inflation increase won’t take effect until the second anniversary after the increase."

Fidelity's options under Survivor’s income cover have also been simplified.

The option that pays for the life of the beneficiary, and benefit periods to ages 55, 60 or 65 have been removed and the available benefit periods have been updated.

These benefit periods now apply: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 years.

The class 1-4 definition of "total disability" has been updated for income protection-type covers.

"Currently, to be considered totally disabled a customer must be - under the regular and personal care of a medical practitioner, and unable to perform at least one important income-producing duty, or engage in their own occupation for more than 10 hours a week, and not working in any other occupation."

The change will see a customer considered totally disabled if they are - under the regular and personal care of a medical practitioner, and unable to perform at least one important income-producing duty, or engage in their own occupation for more than 10 hours per week, and not engaging in any occupation other than up to 10 hours per week in their own occupation.

There’s no change to the income earned in those 10 hours – it still won’t be offset.

Fidelity has changed the definition for severe inflammatory bowel disease to make it clear that both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis need to have failed surgical treatment.

The revised wording for severe inflammatory bowel disease for trauma covers is: The confirmed diagnosis by an appropriate specialist medical practitioner of either Crohn’s disease, or ulcerative colitis, that has failed surgical treatment, is resistant to conventional medical intervention and requires either permanent immunosuppressive therapy or surgical removal of the entire large bowel (colon and rectum).

Fidelity's Funeral Fund and Defined Disability income protection cover will be dropped completely and removed from sale.

Tags: Fidelity Life Insurance Advisers Life insurance