Canada Life has introduced one-time underwriting to its group life schemes, after launching the process for its group income protection schemes last year.
The approach means members requiring underwriting need only be medically underwritten once, and if accepted, no further underwriting will be required, regardless of increases in salary or benefits. This benefits both intermediaries and clients alike, by substantially reducing the time spent on the underwriting and administration processes.
The benefit ceiling per member for one time underwriting will be £3.25m, and available to Group Life schemes of 20 lives or more. In addition, an even higher ceiling will be considered on a case by case basis, for schemes with existing members approaching £3.25m. This is significantly more than that offered by any other major Group Life provider (see table overleaf).
Existing schemes that satisfy Canada Life’s criteria will have one time underwriting automatically applied to their schemes retrospectively. Moreover, switched schemes that have previously benefited from one time underwriting will normally be offered ‘no worse terms’ by Canada Life.
Jon Ford, operations director, said: “We also automatically apply retrospective one-time underwriting to existing schemes that satisfy our criteria. Moreover, one-time underwriting will enable us to further speed up our processes, and make renewals for our existing customers even easier.
“Having seen how successful one-time underwriting has proven to be with our group income protection products, we have every expectation that this will be a welcome advancement.”
