New insurance industry guidelines are helping to keep the number of rejected critical illness claims down, Scottish Equitable has said.
The number of critical illness claims turned down by Aegon Scottish Equitable has halved over the past 12 months, new figures released by the company show.
At the start of last year, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) introduced new guidelines, setting out three high level categories of non-disclosure so as to make protection policies more transparent and easier for consumers to understand.
And it is these new guidelines that have been cited as a significant factor behind this new trend, with Scottish Equitable reporting it paid out on 91 percent of CI claims, with four in ten of those claims it did turn down being declined for non-disclosure, whereby a customer fails to supply all the appropriate information.
Helen Morris, technical claims manager at Aegon Scottish Equitable, commented: "We have changed our approach to claims handling following the new ABI guidance on treatment of non-disclosure and worked with IFAs to educate them on the areas where non-disclosure occurs and what they can do to stop it occurring at application stage, along with launching a new understanding claims website."
These latest figures come just days after Norwich Union, which is soon to be renamed Aviva, reported it declined just eight percent of all CI claims it received in 2008, down from 11 percent in 2005.
