Following consultation with adviser firms providers will be awarded a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal for both their overall proposition and in underlying categories. These are: incapacity definition, claim statistics, claims process, premium options, added value benefits, deferred periods, indexation, terminal illness benefit (FIB only) and exclusions (FIB).
Carlos Thibaut, lifetime group managing director, said: “Income protection is an essential part of sound financial planning and it is important that advisers have confidence that such policies will pay out and give their clients a really good claims experience.
“Any tools or resources that can build adviser confidence by factoring in such issues and help establish who has the best processes are very welcome.
“We really like being able to have a single overall rating as well as ratings in the underlying areas benchmarked as this enables us to compare insurers based on individual parts of their proposition.”
In the inaugural F&TRC Income Protection and Family Income Benefit ratings, based on the overall proposition AEGON, AIG, Bright Grey and The Exeter Pure Protect took Bronze, Aviva, Friends Life and LV= Personal Sick Pay were awarded Silver while The Exeter Income One, Legal & General, LV= and VitalityLife Primary, VitalityLife Comprehensive claimed Gold.
Simon Hendy, key account director at Mortgage Advice Bureau, added: “Family Income Benefit is an underused product that provides clients with great value.
“A ratings system that helps advisers to easily compare the family income benefit policies based on their strengths in a range of areas could really help advisers understand the differences in insurer propositions.”
