Help and information

Your claims

If you’re making a claim, taking care of you with speed, sensitivity and compassion is top of our list. We’ve got dedicated people with years of experience behind them – ready to guide you through every stage of the process. The team are ready and waiting, so ask away. Here’s where you can get started.

MAKE A CLAIM

Your finances

We’re ready to help you manage your policy if your financial circumstances mean you need to make a change. It’s much easier if you tell us that you’re struggling – that way we can come up with a solution together. If it’s something we can’t fix, we’ll put you in touch with other services that might have the answer.

Have a chat to your financial adviser first, and if any of these sound like they might help you, then get in touch with our customer services team. Read a bit more information about all of these options.

Deferred premium

Our policies, as standard, offer a 30-day deferral period. This means if a customer is unable to make a payment on time, provided they can make payment by the time their next premium is due, then their policy will remain inforce and unaffected by the late payment.

This could mean, however, that a customer ends up paying a double premium next time round. As an example, a customer is unable to pay their £50 premium due 1st June so requests a deferral for up to 30 days. This means, on the 1st July, we will collect both the missed June premium and the July premium now due – collecting £100 in total.

Customers wishing to request a premium deferral should get in touch with our customer service team. Our contact number is 0345 600 6820, and lines are open Monday-Thursday from 9.00am – 6.00pm, or Friday 9.00am – 5.30pm, except UK bank holidays.

A premium deferral can be requested at any time throughout the duration of the policy and no proof of financial hardship is required.

Mid-term alterations

Many of our products offer customers the option to permanently reduce their sum assured and/or term of their cover, which will reduce the overall cost. These options, if available, are built into the cover and offer the flexibility to amend the level and term of the cover to suit changing needs and affordability.

Flexible policy request

Our flexible policy request enables individual protection customers to reduce their premium for six months and continue to be insured, but at a lower level of cover. At the end of the six-month period, the premium, and sum assured or monthly benefit, will automatically return to the previous levels immediately prior to this change being made, without underwriting or completion of any medical questions. It means our customers can reduce their monthly outgoings and remain covered for an extended period while they’re experiencing financial hardship.

Your policy

It’s important you know everything you need to about your policy, so there’s choices about how you want to receive that information. As well as the usual methods of post, email and over the phone, we’re on hand to make things more accessible too. Here’s a list of some of the ways we can help – contact us if they’d be helpful for you or someone you know:

• Braille
• Large print
• TextRelay – for making calls in text format
• Audio – spoken versions of our policy documents
• Translation to another language

Simple guide to trusts

If you're looking to buy life insurance (or already have it), you may have heard about ‘trusts’. This guide is a simple introduction to what a trust is, why you might want to set one up, who’s involved, and how you can get started. That way you can chat to a financial, or legal, adviser and see if it’s something that would suit you.

Just to be clear, we can’t advise on whether putting your policy into trust is the right thing for you. We always recommend speaking to a professional, as they’ll be able to recommend what’s best for your situation.

Your support

Sometimes, it might be in your best interests to let someone else discuss your policy on your behalf. There’s a couple of different ways to go about this, and we’d recommend talking your decision through before going ahead.

• Your financial adviser – if you bought your insurance through them, they can already discuss your policy with us and manage parts of it for you. That’s things like changing your contact details, reissuing documents and cancelling cover.
• Someone else – you can choose someone you know and trust to discuss your policy with us. We’ll check that this is ok with you first, and you’ll need to make sure they have your policy details to be able to speak to us. All the final decisions will still be yours to make.
• Appointees – you can appoint someone from the Department for Work and Pensions or your Local Authority to help manage your policy. Again, all the final decisions will remain yours.
• Legal power of attorney (LPOA) – this is a legal document that means someone you choose can act on your behalf – we’ll need to see it. That means (unlike the above) they’ll be able to make final decisions on what happens to your policy. If you’d like to know more about setting one of these up, click this link -
  https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney
• Deputies – a court can appoint someone to manage your affairs for you. Similar to the LPOA option, we’ll need to see the legal document and they’ll be able to make all the final decisions on your policy.

Support from elsewhere

As much as we’ll always do our best to help, sometimes charities and other services might be the right support for you. Here’s some of the organisations we recommend.