Scottish Provident life insurance review

“Scottish Provident” is one of the leading providers of life and other forms of insurance in UK. It was founded in 1837 and during its long existence it established itself as strong and reliable player in UK life insurance market. In 2000 it was bought by bank “Santander” (previously “Abbey Group”) and now it is part of “Royal London Group”.

The company offers wide variety of options that won various awards for innovation in the insurance market. Moreover, it can be said that in past years the company is growing very fast. In 2009 “Scottish Provident” paid out about £49 million in claims, while in the first half of 2011 the worth of satisfied claims was almost the same as two years before in whole year and reached – £46 million. Though the company offers a lot of products, the main are these ones: life insurance, critical illness, income protection and unemployment cover.

Scottish Provident life insurance

Self assurance plan

“Scottish Provident” life insurance (also known as life assurance) mainly consists of two parts: self-assurance and plan called Pegasus, which offer whole of life insurance option. The first one self-assurance is designed in the way that it can pay a lump sum, regular income or instalments (depending on a choice of a client) after a satisfied claim. There are many options of possible benefits. These includes life cover, critical illness cover, unemployment cover, premium waiver benefit and disability income benefit as well as cover buyback, which can be made by the client after an initial claim.

Life cover benefits are designed to pay out if the person dies or meets the company’s provided definition of terminal illness. Critical illness benefit adds to the list of covered areas a disability that can be suffered by the client. The first two benefits pays out a lump sum. That is the difference from unemployment, disability and premium waiver benefits. Moreover, it must be mentioned that in order to satisfy the claim of critical illness, the person needs to survive for at least 14 days after fulfilling company’s definition of critical illness.

Unemployment benefit pays out a monthly payments to replace part of the income until the person is unemployed. Disability benefit replaces some of the earnings if the client is unable to perform at least two of six work tasks. It does not matter if this is temporarily or permanently. Of course, if this is temporarily then after being able to perform all the work tasks, the person is not paid disability income benefit for the time being. The last benefit, premium waiver is called premium waiver and takes care of the premiums if the person loses the job or is unable to work either temporarily or permanently.

Application process

The process to get the life insurance from “Scottish Provident” is as follows: firstly the person needs to apply for the insurance either filling normal application form or the one provided in the internet. Secondly, he needs to choose what benefits he wants to have. “Scottish Provident” allows mix the benefits depending on the needs of the client.

After choosing the benefits client must decide whether he wants their level of benefits to change during the selected term or not. It is possible to choose level benefit, increasing benefit or decreasing benefit. Level benefit sets amount insured to be the same during all term of the policy. Increasing benefit allows the amount which is insured to increase according to retail price index (by maximum amount of 10%) on an annual basis. Decreasing benefit allows adjust insured amount according with decreasing amount of the mortgage or other financial obligations.

Two last parts include choosing the term of the insurance and how covered sum will be paid out in case of satisfied claim. It is possible to choose fixed term between 5 and 40 years or renewable term after each 5 or 10 years. For benefit payment it is possible to choose from three options: lump sum payment, regular income or instalments (this option spreads the sum covered through the term of 3 to 5 years).

Pegasus plan

Pegasus is a whole of life insurance plan. It is one of the leading protection plans in the UK insurance industry. It offers whole of life insurance with possibility of various benefits. These benefits include: life cover and critical illness cover. Alongside life cover the person gets free children’s critical illness benefit. While the application is processed, free cover benefit can be provided. Moreover, it is possible to add retirement cover, which lets to convert the covered sum to be more relevant when the person gets older.