25 February 2013

Legal & General is today launching a new online Group Protection quote and buy system. The new system has been designed in conjunction with IFAs and will bring Legal &General's award winning products to the SME community.

  • The online quote and buy system is designed for advisers with clients who want to insure between 10 and 150 employees for Group Life Assurance and/or Group Income Protection benefit.
  • Advisers will be able to get Group Life Assurance quotes for customers where employees are on long term absence due to back pain, stress, anxiety or musculoskeletal problems. They will also be able to put schemes with up to two claims in the previous five years on risk through the online system.
  • A dedicated customer services team at Legal & General's Group Protection will be available on the telephone to support the online quote and buy system.
  • Legal & General Group Protection customers can also benefit from a free telephone based employee assistance programme (EAP,) for all insured and uninsured employees. In addition, Group Life policies come with enhanced face to face bereavement counselling support for families of insured employees and Group Income Protection customers will benefit from free face to face counseling for their insured employees.
  • Legal & General Group Protection customers will also have access to Legal & General's new Healthy Living tool for their employees. This innovative and online tool will enable employees to assess their health and take advantage of a range of e-tools to help improve their personal health.

Phil Kennedy, Business Development Director at Legal & General's Group Protection, says:

"We've designed our new Group Protection online quote and buy system to be simple, easy and quick to use and to help save advisers time when they are working with SME businesses. We want to make it easier for advisers to do business with us through this online system. We'll be working with advisers to develop this system further and add more functionality to support them grow their business"

Policies can be arranged through the new online system to cover between 10 and 150 lives and can include schemes with up to four companies. To further help with administration and save time, up to four categories can be included.

For IFAs, the new online systemwill also produce scheme quotations where companies have had up to two previous claims within five years, it provides generous switching terms and, importantly, the free cover limit is the same online as offline, with the potential to save medical underwriting time.

Linda Baker, Market Development Director, Group Protection, says:

"We've worked with advisers to make sure that the online system is designed around their needs. Advisers can get quotes in 15 minutes and we've built in helpful features that advisers have asked for which cut down re-keying time. We have built in online lookup of Companies House data, automatic job title matching to occupation categories and other features that reduce the need for manual data input. To save more time, comparison quotes on different benefit basis can be produced instantly and all of the policy documents an adviser needs for their client can be downloaded immediately."

Jim Islam, Managing Director of Legal & General Group Protection, says:

"We want to work with IFAs to bring our award winning products to the SME market. We have listened to SME companies and we're committed to helping them to address sickness and absence with free EAP for all our customers' employees whether insured or not, plus our new online health and wellbeing support tool Healthy Living is available as part of our award winning Group Income Protection and Group Life products. We've invested in new technology and staff to provide an efficient, high quality service for our IFAs to support their SME businesses."

Notes to editors

Group Life Assurance

It provides a tax free lump sum if member dies in service in line with their requests.
Further details can be found in our technical guide.

Group Income Protection

GIP aims to provide insurance to pay income protection benefit to employees who cannot work because of long-term illness or injury. When appropriate, we'll provide early intervention and rehabilitation for employees who are absent from work because of long-term illness or injury. Benefit will only be paid if the employee meets our specific definition of long-term illness or injury. Our technical guidegives details of the benefits and when we will and won't pay a claim.

For both Group Life Assurance and Group Income Protection, we'll continue to provide cover and pay any valid claims as long as premiums are paid and the terms are met. Policy terms will be unique to each business and there are some circumstances where we won't provide cover. Further details can be found in our technical guide.                                                                            
The information contained in this press release is intended solely for journalists and should not be relied upon by private investors or any other persons to make financial decisions.

Legal & General Assurance Society Limited. Registered office: One Coleman Street, London EC2R 5AA. Registered in England No. 166055.

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