For this week’s Friday Focus across our New Insurance & Protection, we’re spotlighting one of the most emotionally resonant areas of protection, critical illness (CI) cover. In this exclusive, Setul Mehta, Take to Market Lead at Royal London, shares how the insurer is evolving its approach to make CI cover more transparent, flexible, and relevant to today’s clients.
Critical illness (CI) cover has long been one of the most emotionally powerful yet technically comprehensive parts of financial planning. Advisers often find themselves balancing affordability with breadth of cover, which can sometimes result in CI taking a back seat to life insurance or income protection. However, put simply, CI cover provides a lump sum at the precise moment income and savings can be under the most strain.
At Royal London, we’re continuing to look at how product design, clarity of definitions, and customer communication can make CI easier to understand and recommend. For example, rather than lump-sum payouts, we have partial or early payouts. For those, needing rehabilitation or recovery support without waiting for the NHS, we provide integrated access to RedArc, the independent medical advisory service.
Business clients can now access CI as part of business protection conversations. Through inclusive underwriting, we will protect those that have previously had cancer. This is protection embedded into holistic financial planning.
When a policyholder is diagnosed with one of the enhanced conditions, for example, severe bowel disease, and the policy responds quickly with clear definitions and support, it makes a very clear difference. The payout can relieve immediate financial burden, access to Helping Hand, Royal London’s wellbeing support programme, can steer recovery, and an adviser-led conversation is where this all started. That’s the kind of story that helps advisers and clients link CI to real outcomes.
