Legal & General has made a number of changes to its range of critical illness policies sold through advisers.
The updates affect the provider's Critical Illness Cover, Critical Illness Extra (CIx), and Children’s Critical Illness Extra (CCIx) offerings and involve increasing additional payments and altering definitions of the conditions covered.
Additional payments for CIx have been increased to 25 per cent of the sum assured up to a maximum of £30,000, while those on the children's policies have been increased to 50 per cent of the sum assured, up to a maximum of £30,000.
The insurer also updated the definitions it uses for heart attack and dementia and added craniosynostosis to the list of conditions covered under the children's policy.
Meanwhile, L&G’s standard Critical Illness Cover continues to pay children’s critical illness claims on a level lump sum basis for both level and decreasing policies.
The changes follow L&G’s latest cost of critical illness research, which found the UK’s four biggest critical illnesses (cancer, multiple sclerosis, stroke and coronary heart disease) cost the UK economy more than £15bn a year.
It found for almost a quarter (23 per cent) of employers thought critical conditions such as cancer or a heart attack were the most common cause of long term employee absences.
Craig Brown, director of intermediary at Legal & General, said: "We’ve listened carefully to feedback from advisers to make these latest changes to our CIC offering.
"These updates will ultimately help us to better serve our intermediary partners, providing them and their clients with more choice of cover, whilst not compromising on our price or quality."
He added: "We’ve updated our critical illness products this year with the launch of the optional Children’s Critical Illness Extra and Critical Illness Extra to add further choice to the CIC range, and will continue to do so moving forward."
Roy Mcloughlin, associate director at Cavendish Ware, said: "These are welcome improvements and further evidence that Legal and General are becoming one of the main choices for advisers when comparing plans."
carmen.reichman@ft.com
