OpinionJul 22 2016

People want more from their policy

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People want more from their policy
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People expected more from the team than was delivered. There was little passion on the field and they seemed to be struggling to work as a team, delivering a poor result all round.

It isn’t just in the world of football where people want more than is generally on offer. In many situations in life people want more for their money, more flexibility, better service, or more engagement.

At VitalityLife, we recently conducted research among consumers to look at what they want from illness cover, what appeals to them most and what could make them more engaged in protection. The results showed that generally people want more than what is provided by many standard policies.

When we looked at how illness plans pay out, three times as many people said they would prefer a policy that paid differing amounts relative to the severity of their condition, rather than a policy that paid the same regardless of the illness severity, even though people understood it meant they could receive a smaller payout in some circumstances.

Over half of women said they would prefer a severity product, and this rose to 63 per cent of those aged between 18 and 24.

Similarly, when we asked people about the importance of their cover being reinstated after a claim, so that multiple claims could be made under the same policy, nearly three quarters thought this was important, rising to 82 per cent of younger people.

Rewards can also be an effective way of giving people something tangible for their premiums

With VitalityLife’s Serious Illness Cover, people are 2.5 times more likely to receive a payout than under a typical critical illness policy.

We cover more conditions than any other insurer, including all heart attacks, strokes and more cancers.

To ensure more people can receive a payout, we cover earlier stages of certain illnesses and pay out sooner for some neurological conditions, keeping people’s cover in place after a claim is made.

While we can prove the payment of claims through publishing statistics, it still remains a difficult task to engage people in protection. Technology has been a talking point for many years as one way of helping people interact more with their insurer.

When asked if people would be willing to share health data with an insurer via a wearable device, which could result in paying less for their insurance, 43 per cent said they would consider doing so.

Rewards can also be an effective way of giving people something tangible for their premiums, with over a third saying they would be interested in receiving rewards linked to them displaying healthy behaviour, such as free cinema tickets, travel discounts and coffee.

Protection has long represented something that people put in a drawer and forget about and this needs to change.

More engagement with policyholders and offering tangible benefits can change the way we interact with protection. VitalityLife is the only insurer to give policyholders something back without having to make a claim.

This can give people a real incentive to be healthier with the goal of helping them to lead longer, happier lives. An insurer’s core purpose is of course to pay claims, but we can all also help people to see that policies can offer people much more.