Case Study: Bestinvest
As a financial services organisation, intermediary Bestinvest was aware of the importance of allowing adequate time for the implementation of its flexible benefits scheme on 1 January 2006. The design process had therefore commenced five months previously.
Most quotes for income protection, which is a core benefit, and critical illness cover, which is a non-core benefit, took between three and four weeks to obtain. While this was in line with expectations, it was still noticeably longer than the five to 10 days required for obtaining private medical insurance quotes.
Ken Murphy, director of Bestinvest, says: "Flex takes a long time to implement anyway, so whether obtaining quotes takes a couple of weeks longer than they should do is not a huge issue. But I don't think the turnaround times are very good. "Group protection as a whole is possibly the worst part of the market to deal with because it is less well staffed than the investment side. There may be systems issues as well, because there have been a lot of mergers."
