L&C is delighted to announce that we’ve been nominated for the prestigious Financial Innovations Awards 2017 in the ‘Innovation in Product or Service Design’ category. The nomination is for our Streamlined Mortgage Protection service, set up in association with Royal London, the UK’s largest mutual life insurer. The innovative service is designed to make it quicker and easier to buy life insurance at the same time you take out a mortgage, so that this and other outgoings can be taken care of in the event of your death. The winners of the Financial Innovation Awards will be announced in London on December 7, 2017.
What makes our Streamlined Mortgage Protection so special
The Streamlined Mortgage Protection service has made the life insurance application process much quicker, using advanced machine learning algorithms to provide customers with access to a fast, guaranteed quote for life cover. Rather than having to answer more than 30 questions as they would when submitting a traditional life insurance application, customers who use the Streamlined service only have to answer three medical and three lifestyle underwriting questions, making the process of getting a quote much shorter. Once a quote has been provided, customers are free to shop around for cover elsewhere if they want to, or think about what other protection they might need. If they decide they want to accept the quote, they won’t have to provide any further medical information. Customers who aren’t eligible for a quotation via the Streamlined service can still apply for life cover using traditional underwriting.
Why the service is so important
Many people fail to give proper thought to their protection needs when they take out a mortgage, possibly because the mortgage advice process has become lengthier due to changes in the way the mortgage market is regulated. This can mean that customers forgo cover because they’re unwilling to spend more time buying life insurance - even though it can provide valuable peace of mind that loved ones would be financially secure when you die. A ‘first’ in the protection market, the Streamlined Mortgage service is already cutting down the length of time it takes to make a protection recommendation at L&C, as well as increasing the number of consumers opting to take life cover. It is hoped that critical illness cover will be added to the service in the future.
