Life claims paid have totalled over £728 million or £1.27 million on average every week since 2000. And critical illness claims paid over the same period total £426 million, or £744,000 on average every week.
Looking at the number of claims paid since 2000, there have been over 20,270 individual claims paid for life cover and over 10,560 for critical illness cover.
Clive Allison, market director, Scottish Widows commented, "Since 2000 we have helped over 30,000 families who have made either life or critical illness claims.
“The industry has come a long way over the last few years to raise awareness of the importance of having adequate protection in place and confidence among consumers that life companies will pay out when making a claim has increased. This is due to a number of factors including the ABI's code of conduct on non-disclosure introduced in 2008 and greater emphasis on simplifying the process when making a claim.
"However, the UK population is still hugely underinsured, so Scottish Widows continues to work extremely hard to highlight to its customers the importance of financially protecting themselves with products such as Life and Critical illness."
Life claims
Looking at life cover in isolation, over half (54%) of claims made since 2000 were as a result of cancer, followed by heart related (16%). Split by gender, cancer was the reason for claim in 64% of cases for females, and 47% for males. Heart related claims accounted for 8% of cases for females and 21% for males. The average age of a claimant for both male and female was 55 years.
Critical illness claims
For critical illness, the main three reasons for making a claim remain cancer (59.9%), heart related illness (20.3%) and stroke (7.4%). Amongst males, 46.1% of claims made were for cancer, 34.9% for a heart related illness and 9.8% for stroke. 77.7% of claims among females were for cancer, 5.5% for a heart related illness and 5.1% for stroke. The average of a male claimant was 49 years and for a female claimant 46 years.
