In response to your demand for more immediate income protection, we’re reintroducing LV= Personal Sick Pay with day 1 and 1 week waiting periods. We’re the first provider to re-enter the market with this type of specialist cover, helping you provide more options for those clients who need financial protection to pay out sooner.
As we monitor the ever-changing situation and impacts of COVID-19, we may still offer cover on a more restricted basis for some clients. Compared to pre-COVID, we estimate that you’ll now be able to protect around 75% of clients who would usually wish to apply for Personal Sick Pay with a day 1 or 1 week waiting period. We believe this approach is the right thing to do as it allows you to protect more clients with quality cover. We’ll be keeping these temporary measures under close review to provide your clients with the best outcome possible.
There are some important things you should be aware of about which new clients we can offer day 1 and 1 week waiting periods to, at this stage:
- If your client is self-employed they won’t currently be able to have a policy with a day 1 or 1 week waiting period, but we can still offer them cover on a 4 week waiting period.
- We may restrict day 1 and week 1 waiting periods for other people depending on their personal circumstances.
We’re also making a number of COVID-19 related provisions for all new Personal Sick Pay policyholders, from 29 October 2020:
- For day 1 and 1 week waiting periods we won’t currently pay a claim due to symptoms or complications of COVID-19 or other coronaviruses, respiratory tract infection, cold or flu if your client is unable to work for less than 4 weeks. We’ll consider their claim, and backdate it, if they’re off work with more serious symptoms that last beyond 4 weeks.
- Own occupation definition whilst on a career break or while unemployed will now be available for the first 30 days rather than 12 months, after 31 days your clients cover will revert to homemakers cover.
- Changes to the outcomes for some questions we ask that cover the impact of the pandemic on the customer’s occupation, their earnings and the type of industry they work in.
Find out more about each of these provisions
Personal Sick Pay is our specialist Income Protection aimed at clients in riskier occupations, such as manual workers, who traditionally can be more expensive to insure. It has a number of tailored features including age-costed premiums, own occupation definition of sickness, £1,000 benefit guarantee, a budget option and it’s part of the LV= Flexible Protection Plan.
If you have any questions about Personal Sick Pay with day 1 or week 1 waiting periods, please view our latest update, or contact your account manager.