18 March 2011

Life Insurance Claims Rise, New Research Shows

Over 2010 the number of claims made increased by 5 per cent for life and 13 per cent for critical illness business.

** According to AEGON, 95 per cent of life insurance claims were paid in 2010, this is up from 92 per cent in 2009. **

Critical illness is sweeping the nation as 13 per cent more claims were made last year. 46 per cent of people failed to give important information about their critical condition when claiming for critical illness in 2010. Cancer is the most widespread reason for life and critical illness claims, affecting 52 per cent of life claims.

When faced with such difficult claims to make, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) have attempted to make the process easier for customers. In 2008, they introduced three high level categories of non disclosure to help clarify and improve certainly with paying claims protection policies. These include 1) innocent, which results in the claim being paid in full. 2) negligent, where a proportion of the claim is handed out and 3) deliberate without any care, this means that your claim could be declined altogether.

AGON, leading provider of protection policies including life assurance, critical illness cover and income protection found that 91 per cent of critical illness claims were paid in 2010.

"The improvements made to our procedures in handling claims, together with the ABI changes, have led to far fewer claims being declined and we are hugely encouraged by this,” Head of Underwriting and Claims at AEGON Matt Rann said.

"AEGON's improvements include the introduction of our tele-claims service, available across all our individual protection products, and amendments made to our application form,” continued Rann.

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