"Living with pre-existing or multiple medical conditions can pose many challenges for individuals, and unfortunately, this can also prevent them from buying insurance products."
- Jack Southcott, head of protection propositions at The Exeter
Of those surveyed (250 financial advisers in the UK), 62% report finding protection policies for customers with multiple or pre-existing medical conditions challenging. 30% of advisers stated that the ability to cover these customers is the most important reason for working with an insurer.
“Living with pre-existing or multiple medical conditions can pose many challenges for individuals, and unfortunately, this can also prevent them from buying insurance products,” explained Jack Southcott, head of protection propositions at The Exeter.
Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that pre-existing medical conditions will be the biggest challenge for Private Medical Insurance (PMI) over the next twelve months.
Almost a third (29%) of advisers expect to face this challenge when discussing IP, with 26% highlighting it as a challenge during the advice process. Tackling ‘perceptions of cost’ (36%) was also a worry, as well as ‘clarifying policy exclusions and conditions’ (30%), and ‘explaining the benefits of individual policies’ (29%).
Health insurance advisers predict challenges when it comes to ‘explaining the benefits of different policies’ offered by insurers (31%) and helping customers to overcome ‘perceptions of cost’ (35%).
Likewise, 38% of advisers cited cost as a challenge when discussing Life Insurance, followed by clarifying policy exclusions and conditions (33%), and explaining the benefits of individual policies (28%).
“In recent years, insurers have taken positive steps to further grow the market by making products more accessible to more people, including those with pre-existing medical conditions.
“As we continue to develop our propositions, there is the potential to further improve accessibility to the products we offer, so that more people can benefit from the peace of mind that insurance provides,” Jack concluded.
