Protection Guru has announced the launch of Designed by Doctors, a series of recommended and updated example Critical Illness definitions.

These cover conditions such as heart attacks, Total Permanent Disability, Multiple Sclerosis among others. The ambition is to ensure the best possible patient outcomes by improving the clarity of policy wordings and ensuring alignment with the latest medical practice.

With the introduction of Consumer Duty placing an unprecedented spotlight on the quality of protection products, Protection Guru brought together an independent medical committee of doctors and epidemiologists to create new example wordings for Critical Illness policies.

The committee revisited 10 key Critical Illness conditions to identify unnecessary complexity and obsolete medical terminology. While Critical Illness policies are legal documents and by nature must include complex medical terms, Protection Guru believes wording should be easy for qualified medical professionals to understand, which is not always the case. This is the test the medical committee has applied in creating these new standards.

Ian McKenna, Protection Guru’s founder, said: “By producing our example wordings for clarity and accuracy, we can offer insurers and reinsurers impartial guidance on keeping their policies in line with contemporary medical practice.

“Since we launched our original Critical Illness benchmarking in 2017, we have been able to work with many individual insurers to simplify and improve wordings for consumers. This is the next phase of this work through which we are looking to raise standards across the industry.

“It is crucial to recognise we are not seeking to encourage adoption of a single or standard Critical Illness wording. That would be counterproductive. Stimulating competition is core to our objectives. We are however looking to demonstrate that wordings can be better than they are today.

“As Critical Illness policies were originally invented by a doctor, the late Marius Barnard, we see reengaging with medical professionals as a very natural step to protect consumers.”

Critical Illness wordings were first benchmarked in 1991 by the National Federation of independent financial advisors, which subsequently became the IFA Association and IFA Portfolio.

Adviser firms using the Protection Guru Pro service will next year be able to use a ‘Designed by Doctors’ assessment when recommending insurers who meet the medical committee’s benchmarks for clarity and reflect latest medical practice.

Johnny Timpson, the Financial Inclusion Commissioner, added: “Consumer research has shown previously that one of the reasons consumers buy Critical Illness plans is the certainty of a payout they can rely on. This only works properly for them if we keep wordings as clear as possible and in line with medical practice. It is essential the definitions are both accurate and keep patient outcomes front of mind.”