Friends Provident unveils new income protection

Friends Provident, the income protection market leader, has linked up with MorganAsh to provide a tele-interviewing service to speed up income protection applications and reduce non-disclosure.

Registered nurses undertake the interviews, at a time and place to suit the consumer. If requested by Friends Provident, they will contact the applicant and ask them a number of questions focusing mainly on their medical history and will be able to ask more detailed questions on specific disclosures.

This change to underwriting is designed to provide customers with a number of benefits:

• Faster processing of applications

• Reduced non-disclosure

• Signature free

• More informed underwriting decisions

Mark Jones, protection products and actuarial manager at Friends Provident, says: “The new tele-interviewing service will speed up processing which will benefit customers and will enable us to gather more detailed information about the applicant’s health. This will benefit the customer as it means we can make a more informed underwriting decision. There is less chance that a claim will be disputed.” 

After extensive piloting with MorganAsh over the last two years, Friends Provident proved that nurse tele-interviews do provide sufficient information to enable underwriting without GP reports for many situations. This speeds up the process dramatically from weeks to days, improving the service to consumers.

Tele-interviewing will be used for benefit levels from £100 to £800 per week, depending on the customer’s age and occupation class.