Putting adequate financial plans in place to cover the cost of care in later life has long been an issue for financial planning, with a lack of products on the market to cater for such needs.
One option recently launched by VitalityLife is a whole of life insurance policy called lifestyle care that allows people to access the sum assured early if the policyholder has care needs.
Up to 100 per cent of the policy benefit can be used for care, and 20 per cent of the benefit is also payable on early diagnosis of Alzheimers, Parkinsons or Dementia.
Tony Mudd, divisional director at St James’s Place Wealth Management, said that lifestyle care “offers a great opportunity to address this concern and opens a whole new protection market for advisers”.
4) Vision care.
A vision care plan, often implemented through employers, aims to give people high quality eye care, alongside discounts and savings on eyewear, while also being able to diagnose chronic health conditions.
Global vision care Provider VSP, who covers one in every six Americans and now operates in the UK, claims that high street eye tests do not typically achieve much, other than selling more pairs of glasses.
Jeremy Chadwick, managing director of VSP EMEA, said: “More thorough eye tests can detect a range of serious health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes at a much earlier stage. In fact, signs of diabetes can be seen in eye examinations up to seven years before it’s generally detected through typical health care channels.
“An eye examination can say a lot about your overall health, so regular and thorough eye checks should be a fundamental part of everyone’s healthy living strategy.”
5) Global medical expertise and treatment.
The additional benefits available through some protection products are often said to be as important, if not more so, than the money received from a claim.
These can include access to specialist medical teams, counselling, rehabilitation, and physiotherapy, and people don’t always have to make a claim to use them.
Recently Friends Life teamed with Best Doctors to offer ‘global treatment’ to its protection policyholders, giving them access to the best medical minds, and treatment at specialist medical centres across the world for £4 per month additional premium.
It works when the policyholder, or their child, is diagnosed with a serious illness and requires covered treatment, such as cancer treatment, heart surgery, neurosurgery and bone marrow or organ transplant.
They are able to have their medical case reviewed by the leading specialist in that field wherever they are in the world, and then receive treatment abroad if needed with the cost of drugs covered that are not funded by the NHS.
