"The introduction of greater choice from Guardian has been well received by the market, which is in line with what advisers were telling us about their clients needing to prioritise costs."
- Hilary Banks, Sales Director at Guardian
Earlier this month, Guardian announced the intended expansion of its product range with the launch of a new low-cost life cover: Life Essentials. This product shares various benefits offered with Guardian’s flagship Life Protection, including a dual life approach, premium waiver, optional Children’s Critical Illness (CI), Payout Planner, and additional added-value services.
READ MORE: Guardian set to launch low-cost life cover to support a wider spectrum of customers
By offering this choice, Guardian hopes to better support advisers with clients who’ve been impacted by the Cost-of-Living Crisis by widening access to its menu of outcome-focused protection products.
Hilary Banks, Sales Director at Guardian, revealed that Life Essentials is available for quote and apply within its own platform, Protection Builder, as well as on Iress’ The Exchange, iPipeline’s SolutionBuilder, UnderwriteMe’s Protection Platform, and LifeQuote. “Sitting alongside our existing premier life cover, this addition provides more choice for a wide range of advisers looking to put in place Guardian’s award-winning protection for their clients,” she added.
“The introduction of greater choice from Guardian has been well received by the market, which is in line with what advisers were telling us about their clients needing to prioritise costs,” Hilary explained. Going forward, Guardian is excited to begin working with its advice partners to maximise this distribution opportunity and get more people the protection they need.
Alongside Life Essentials, Guardian has made some other changes to its protection menu. As of today, Guardian has increased the interest rate of all Decreasing Covers from 5% to 8%. This more closely aligns to mortgage interest rate levels and the rates at which clients will typically be seeing their outstanding mortgage decrease. Guardian has also removed the Mortgage Guarantee.
Meanwhile, in line with the Association of British Insurers' (ABI) latest review of Critical Illness (CI) minimum standards, Guardian has improved its CI definitions for Dementia and Low-Grade Prostate Cancer.
Dementia including Alzheimer’s is “a definite diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or Dementia by a UK Consultant Neurologist, Geriatrician, Neuropsychologist or Psychiatrist. There must be permanent cognitive dysfunction with progressive deterioration in the ability to do all the following: Remember; Reason; Perceive, understand, express and give effect to ideas.”
Low-grade Prostate Cancer is “a definite diagnosis by a UK Consultant of a malignant tumour of the prostate positively diagnosed and historically classified as having a Gleason score between two and six inclusive and having progressed to clinical TNM classification T1N0M0 – T2An0m0 inclusive. (If the prostate cancer is classified as having progressed to a Gleason score of seven and above or clinical classification T2Bn0m0 or Pt2n0m0 following prostatectomy (removal of the prostate), we’ll pay out the full amount covered.)”
