Legal & General has updated its critical illness (CI) offering with improved cover and a simplified list of conditions.

The aim is to make its critical illness products much easier for advisers and customers to understand.

The new merged list of conditions should make it easier for intermediaries to explain to their clients what conditions are covered, allowing for more straightforward protection conversations. For example, ‘coronary artery by-pass grafts’ and ‘open heart surgery’ have been combined to ‘specified heart surgery’.

L&G says the conditions covered and quality of definitions are a crucial part of whether a CI claim is successful and more simplified wording will give customers greater understanding that a future claim could be accepted.

During recent polling by the insurer, 81% of intermediaries said they would prefer similar conditions to be merged together where it makes sense.

Legal & General’s critical illness offering also includes the following changes:

• Legal & General is increasing additional payments for CIx, which is only available via intermediaries, from a maximum of £30,000 or 25% to £30,000 or 50% of the amount of cover, whichever is lower. The insurer has also added additional payments for coronary angioplasty, brain abscess drained via craniotomy, primary sclerosing cholangitis and necrotising fasciitis.
• The insurer has extended its children’s cover to include more conditions. If CCIx is purchased with either CI or CIx, cover will be extended to include all conditions covered under Critical Illness Cover, Critical Illness Extra and Children’s Critical Illness Extra. Until now, Children’s Critical Illness Extra has only included conditions listed under Critical Illness and CCIx
• Improvements have been made to definitions around liver failure by removing the drug and alcohol exclusion and major organ transplants which now include artificial devices or animal transplants. Coverage on pulmonary hypertension has also been extended to cover all causes, assuming policyholders meet the specified New York Heart Association classifications.

Craig Brown, director of intermediary, Legal & General, said: “Last year, our research into critical illnesses found that conditions like cancer and heart disease take a staggering £15.2bn a year out of Britain’s economy. Worse still, these terrible illnesses can have a hugely damaging personal impact, not just on the health of the individual affected but for the financial livelihood of their family, too.

“At Legal & General, our mission is to work together with intermediaries to ensure more people across the country are protected from the financial impact of a critical illness. That’s why we’re listening to our intermediary partners, the very people on the front line of conversations about cover, taking on board their feedback to improve our critical illness offerings.

“Quality over quantity is really important to us as a business. These latest changes improve the level of cover we offer to customers, but also reduce the complexity of critical illness products. We think that will make it easier for advisers to have those important protection conversations and explain these products to clients, while also giving consumers much more certainty over the support they have if and when they need it.”