Friends happy with critical illness stats

by Gill Montia

Story link: Friends happy with critical illness stats

Friends Provident paid £34.5 million in critical illness claims during 2009, the company has revealed.

Of the 624 claims received, only 46 were declined and the percentage of claims declined due to non-disclosure fell by nearly half, from 4% to 2.1%.

The statistics also show a rise in the number of children’s critical illness claims received and paid out by Friends since 2007.

Last year, the youngest claimant was a baby girl aged nine months who needed open heart surgery.

The payment was £20,000, the maximum amount payable under the policy.

The insurer’s head of protection, Ed Stuart-Brown, says: “I am delighted that our percentage of claims paid has increased for the seventh year in a row.”

He adds: “The industry sometimes finds itself under attack for turning down a small proportion of claims, but the reality is we are in business to pay claims rather than to find reasons not to.”

Other key points from the data are as follows: 92.6% of claims were paid; the majority (68%) of claims paid were for cancer; the average critical illness payout was just under £59,000; the largest claim paid in 2009 was £600,000.

Finally, the average age of a claimant was 44 and the average time a policy was in force before a claim was received was 5.5 years.