It said switching to gender neutral rates ahead of the legislation enforcement will provide certainty for advisers and ensure applications in the pipeline by 1 December can be processed on gender specific rates ahead of the 21 December deadline.
If by 1 December an application has further medical evidence outstanding LV= will offer a G-Day Guarantee to ensure the business can still be placed on gender specific rates in time.
LV= will underwrite the application based on the medical information provided by the client at application and using normal underwriting standards will offer them a premium and terms.
If accepted by the client the application will be put on-risk for the full cover applied for on gender specific rates to beat the 21 December deadline.
LV= will then seek the additional medical evidence as normal which must be received within three months of the cover start date.
In the unlikely event that the medical evidence received is materially different to that given at application, LV= will inform the adviser that the terms of the policy will be reviewed but cover will remain on gender specific rates.
To provide as much certainty as possible for advisers policies will not be adjusted for small differences in medical disclosure.
LV= won’t apply the G-Day Guarantee to female income protection business as premiums are set to decrease under gender neutral pricing or where an adviser instructs LV= not to do so.
Mark Jones, LV= head of protection, said: “Announcing how we will deal with our pipeline business means advisers can plan with confidence ahead of the gender directive.
"They can now be certain of securing gender specific rates for their clients if they want them, for applications received by LV= between now and 1 December. Given the expertise of our underwriters, we are confident fewer than 1% of policies put on-risk will need to be altered once we have received any further medical evidence retrospectively.
“We’ve listened to advisers' requests to provide a clear, simple and common sense approach to pipeline business and switch to gender neutral rates ahead of 21 December to avoid any last minute uncertainty.
"Advisers are now guaranteed not to miss the gender deadline or see clients face an enforced increase in premiums if they act now.”
Advisers do not need to request that the G-Day Guarantee is applied to protection applications received before 1 December.
LV= will update the adviser on the progress of the application as normal, and automatically inform the adviser if the guarantee needs to be activated.
