Coronavirus (COVID-19)

• Keeping our business running
• Underwriting
• Claims
• Helping customers in financial difficulty

Keeping our business running

The health and safety of our colleagues and customers is always our top priority and we’re following all safety advice and precautions as recommended by the government.

Working remotely

Following the government’s guidance to avoid all non-essential social contact and travel and where possible work from home, we’ve taken steps to align to this. We have advised all our staff who have the capability to do so to work from home. Many of our staff already work from home on a regular basis so our systems are enabled to facilitate this and are running smoothly. Our goal is to help minimise the spread of the virus by reducing contact as much as possible while ensuring we continue to operate sustainably and securely as a business.

We aim to minimise impact on our core business operations and we're working hard to continue to deliver the very best possible service to you and your clients. So far our service is holding up really well and we've maintained our service standards. We’ll continue to be contactable as normal through phone and email, and new business applications will continue to be processed. We have a fully signature-free online application process for new business and where possible we’ll use e-signatures for trusts and AMRAs.

Support for you

We’ve advised all our staff to limit non-essential travel in line with government guidance. But you’ll continue to receive the high quality of service you’re used to through your Royal London sales contact. They’ll be in touch with you over phone and email.

You can also contact your named case managers about any of your cases and will continue to have direct access to our underwriters.

And we've got some practical hints, tips and tools to help you keep your business on track during this difficult time.

Our third parties

We work with several third parties to provide our Helping Hand support service.

The nurse advisory service is provided by RedArc. We’re in regular contact with them and they’ve advised us that all their employees are now working from home with secure remote access to their systems. Due to the nature of this service, safeguarding of their employees and patients is a high priority and they’ve assured us that their processes have been adapted accordingly. Please note that RedArc can’t deal with any questions relating to Coronavirus as it’s a notifiable disease. Clients should contact the NHS 111 service if they have any concerns about this or are displaying symptoms.

Our legal service is provided by Epoq. Due to higher than normal levels of calls to the helpline, your clients might experience a delay in response of up to 24 hours.

Underwriting

We're working hard in these unprecedented times to offer cover to as many of your customers as possible. But we've had to make some temporary changes to our underwriting which we've set-out below.

These changes take effect from 16 April 2020 and apply to:

- all new applications
- any applications that are still in our pipeline where we have not issued an acceptance letter
- any case where terms have expired or that need a further underwriting assessment

The majority of customers will still be able to get cover. Before these changes, we offered cover to 95 out of every 100 customers. Even after these changes, 92 out of every 100 customers will potentially get cover (based on what we saw in 2019).

Coronavirus application questions

We’ve introduced a new question to our application forms, data capture forms and declaration of health forms. This is so we can better establish and manage the insurance risks of Coronavirus. 

We added the new question to our online applications on 17 March 2020 and we’ll be asking it for all paper applications and declarations of health received from this date.

This new question will establish if a customer has:

• a new continuous cough and/or a high temperature
• been advised to self-isolate
• tested positive for Coronavirus
• had direct contact with someone who’s been confirmed or suspected to have Coronavirus

If a customer has a history of any of these in the last month, we’ll postpone offering cover.

We recognise that front line health care workers are in a unique position. In most cases we'll be able to progress their application, even if they answer that they've had direct contact with someone who's been confirmed or suspected to have Coronavirus

Customers should only answer that they’re self-isolating if:

• medical staff have specifically advised them to do so
• they've been advised to shield for 12 weeks due to being defined on medical grounds as being extremely vulnerable from Coronavirus
• they're self-isolating due to symptoms they have or have tested positive for Coronavirus
• they're following guidance due to being in direct contact with someone who has symptoms (household isolation)
• they're following guidance having recently returned from an affected area

If they’re working from home or are following general advice to avoid social interactions, they should not consider themselves as self-isolating.

If they're the carer or family member of someone in an extremely vulnerable group and are shielding without having had personal advice to self-isolate (i.e. due to travel, symptoms or a positive test) then they don't have to answer that they're self-isolating.

You can find the list of the extremely vulnerable people on the government website.

Where we postpone cover due to symptoms, self-isolation advice, higher risk contact, or a positive test, this will be for a minimum of one month. The postponement period will last until the customer has had a negative Coronavirus test or the self-isolation period has passed, symptoms have fully resolved, and the customer no longer requires any treatment or follow-up.

Travel

We expect travel to become less of a concern because of current government recommended travel restrictions and restricted availability of flights.

We'll continue to postpone offering cover to customers who tell us they've recently travelled to a high risk area. Underwriting of future travel will reflect the usual travel risk associated with the country of travel, with no additional underwriting action required specifically for Coronavirus.

Medical evidence

We know that Coronavirus is currently placing strain on our NHS and we're experiencing delays in underwriting evidence being returned by GPs. Some surgeries have already confirmed they're delaying or not completing reports while they understandably focus on delivering primary care. We'll continue to monitor the situation and will only issue requests for reports where we absolutely have to. However, it's likely that we may not receive some of these requests.

Meanwhile government advice regarding social distancing make face-to-face medical examinations inappropriate. Both our third party medical suppliers have confirmed they're postponing all examinations.

This will place additional pressure on our ability to gather medical evidence at underwriting stage. It will affect cases above our medical underwriting limits and therefore higher sums assured and/or older customers. It will also affect any case where your client tells us about a medical condition where the technical nature of the condition or lack of detail from the client means we need more information.

Our key intention remains to avoid over burdening the NHS at this time and therefore the following changes have been made in relation to evidence requests:

Non-medical limits (NMLs)

For Life Cover, we’ve increased our NMLs by 10% for people under age 60, rounded up to the nearest £25,000.

This will reduce the number of applications that need medical evidence and help your customers get some protection, without delay.

For cases that need evidence due to routine medical limits, we’ve switched the first tier of our NMLs from requiring a paramed to a GPR on all covers.

For cases that need evidence above the first tier routine medical limits, we'll contact you to see if you wish to go ahead with a sum assured that is below the relevant threshold. If your customer doesn't want to reduce their cover amount, we’ll postpone their application until we can get the necessary evidence.

See our up-to-date underwriting limits.

Medical evidence due to disclosures 

If we need further medical information due to disclosures, our underwriters will continue to look at alternative routes to obtain this in order to complete an assessment. 

Where this isn't possible, we'll request medical evidence as normal. However, it's likely that we may not receive some of these requests or they will be delayed. If the clinic confirms that they're unable to complete the request, we'll need to postpone cover until we can complete underwriting

Temporary underwriting position for higher-risk customers

We've updated our underwriting position for certain groups of customers who are considered more vulnerable to the effects of Coronavirus.

This will impact some customers who are rated and others who have existing health issues, such as significant or chronic respiratory conditions. We've reduced the maximum level of rating that we'll be able to accept to 200%, and will taper this threshold by age.

We'll be happy to reconsider cover for higher-risk customers after six months and when the current situation has been resolved.

Changes to Diabetes Life Cover eligibility

From Thursday 14 May, we’ll be making changes to our Diabetes Life Cover underwriting approach, this will bring them in-line with changes we previously made to our Menu Plan.

The information below shows the customers we’ll not be able to offer cover to based on their diabetes alone.

Type 1 diabetic

Claims

We’ll consider any claims for Coronavirus against the terms and conditions of the customer’s plan and our usual claims philosophy.

As our minimum deferred period for Income Protection is four weeks, we don’t expect any claims for this cover from customers who’ve not been diagnosed with the virus itself.

For the majority of people who contract COVID-19, the symptoms will be short-lived and unlikely to trigger a panyment for Income Protection. However, where the illness does extend beyond four weeks, we’ll consider a claim in line with the terms and conditions of the plan. There must be clear evidence that the customer hasn’t been able to work due to illness or injury and not the unavailability of work, which Income Protection isn’t designed to cover.

If a customer has been medically advised to self-isolate due to a pre-existing medical condition and it prevents them from working for longer than their deferred period, we’ll consider a claim in line with the terms and conditions of the plan. There must, like any other Income Protection claim, be a corresponding reduction in income.

Our plans don’t contain exclusions in relation to pandemics or the contraction of a virus in a foreign country.

We do restrict Critical Illness and Income Protection claims to certain parts of the world. This means if the person covered is living or working outside the UK we may need them to return to one of a list of specified countries for us to consider a claim. See our Plan Details for more information.

Our usual process for Income Protection claims is to get confirmation from the customer’s GP that they’re unable to work. If this confirmation isn’t available, for example if a customer has to self-isolate, our claims team will agree alternatives to ensure that we can pay claims quickly. Any customer who wants to discuss a claim can contact our claims team directly on 0345 6094 500.

Helping customers in financial difficulty

We recognise the impact COVID-19 is having on our customers, and some might be struggling financially just now. We want to do everything we can to help, so they can retain their cover during this time of uncertainty and in the future. If any of your clients’ personal circumstances have changed or they’re facing financial difficulties and unable to pay their monthly premiums in the short term, please ask them to contact our customer service team on 0345 6094 500 and they’ll be able to discuss what options we may be able to offer.

Keeping you up-to-date

We’ll continue to follow updates and guidance from government and health officials. This is clearly an unprecedented situation with things changing daily. We’ll aim to keep you informed of any significant changes affecting our ongoing business operations if we need to adapt to changed circumstances.