Many providers stayed open until midnight to get cases accepted in time
Many protection providers stayed open until midnight last night as advisers rushed to secure gender specific rates before today’s G-Day deadline.
The EU gender directive – which bans insurers from offering different prices to males and females – came into force today, and will push up premiums for women significantly.
Insurers have adopted a range of approaches to pipeline business in the run up to the directive – see our comparison table for a comprehensive guide – with some offering a ‘G-Day guarantee’ whereby gender specific rates were guaranteed for applications submitted before 21 December, even if some information was outstanding.
Many have reported a significant increase in protection business in recent weeks as consumers rush to secure cheaper rates – Zurich, for instance, said applications via intermediaries have been up 50% compared to its weekly average for the year.
LV= is one provider which stayed open until midnight last night, and head of protection Mark Jones said the business has seen “a big increase” in protection applications over the past few weeks.
He added: “We had around 100 people working on this yesterday, many until midnight, to get our protection business on the books before the gender directive deadline, and I’m proud to say that every policy that was in the pipeline under our G-Day guarantee is now successfully on risk.”
Phil Jeynes, head of account development at PruProtect, said the provider’s service team also stayed open until midnight to ensure as many cases as possible were accepted before the directive came into effect.
And Friends Life said it offered terms to some 2,800 customers yesterday - roughly three times the number of decisions made on a normal day.
Royal London life offices Bright Grey and Scottish Provident have offered those with applications in the pipeline by 20 December ‘initial cover’ on gender specific rates until their applications complete.
Managing director Roger Edwards said the life offices have been “watching applications climb steeply since early December”.
He added: “The build up to G-Day has been a long one but the lesson we’ve learnt is that when we all align, we can really take a huge step in relaying the importance of protection and getting people to act.”