Enhancements to a wide range of products as well as the launch of some new ones will be rolled out by Partners Life in July.
Speaking at a one-day conference organized by the insurer last week, its General manager Product, Steve Wright, outlined changes to a wide range of the firm’s products and benefits including the Counselling Benefits, Financial and Legal Advice Benefits, and Special Events Increase benefits across all its lump sum products.
He told an audience of around 500 financial advisers at the Cordis Hotel, Auckland, there would be tweaks to the Dependent Child Funeral Support Benefit under Life Cover, the Blindness Definition under TPD Cover, the Bed Confinement Benefit under disability covers, changes to six trauma conditions – namely alzheimer’s disease, aplastic anaemia, HIV, multiple sclerosis, major organ transplant, and diabetes.
Three changes to Medical Cover were also announced, the first being an increase in the annual Non-Surgical Benefit limit from $300,000 to $500,000, a new Post Public Treatment Benefit covering the costs of private medical expenses when the client has had covered treatment in the Public System, and a change to the cancer definition within the Excess Waiver Benefit.
Kris Ballantyne, the firm’s Chief Marketing Officer, says two new products are being released by the firm; Moderate Trauma Cover and Income and Expenses Cover.
“Both of these products are designed to be more cost-effective options of existing products, allowing advisers and clients greater flexibility in scaling their coverage for budget,” says Ballantyne.
“Moderate Trauma Cover has definitions which sit between Trauma and Severe Trauma cover, and will be roughly 20% cheaper than Trauma Cover, allowing advisers to ‘build their own’ severity based package.”
Ballantyne says Income and Expenses Cover is a disability income contract that limits claims after the first year to a ‘suitable occupation’ definition of disability, as opposed to the traditional ‘own occupation’ definition.
“It means clients who have long-term serious disabilities will be able to claim for their full policy term, but limiting the exposure to some of the anti-selection risk in long-term claims, which has caused issues in traditional income cover style products,” he says.
“This product also allows for a flexible assessment of either a standard indemnity loss of earnings calculation, or an indemnity calculation of household expenses at claim time – including mortgage repayments – and will be priced roughly 25% cheaper than current loss of earnings income cover.”
All of these product changes will be launched in early July, and further details and workshops with the Partners Life product team will follow in the coming weeks.