10 reasons to use Ellipse for group life and disability cover

1.      Our online quote system offers more options than any other group risk provider: group life quotes for up to 500 members, group critical illness and income protection for up to 300, and a minimum of just two members.  If you’ve not used it before, this 4-minute video explains the main features.

2.      We don’t charge minimum premiums or policy fees.  This makes us particularly attractive to small companies.

3.      Accurate premiums as we don’t use unit rates.  Our group contracts all charge for each member’s cover separately –– so your clients pay the accurate premiums for the cover that their members enjoy.

4.      We use a secure, intelligent online system to collect medical and other personal information about members whose benefits require underwriting.  It typically takes members around 20 minutes for members to complete the assessment (which they can do securely at any computer with internet access) and, in most cases, they get their decision immediately afterwards.  This 3-minute video explains how it works.

5.      We have an automated data updating service that allows clients to upload their data securely, quickly and easily.  Scheme accounts, with details of any changes to direct premium collections are then produced for them to download immediately.  It takes minutes – not weeks or months – to complete the whole process.  This 5-minute video takes you through the whole process.

6.      Master Trust: for registered group life schemes, our Master Trust facility means clients don’t need to set up their own trust and register it with HMRC (and it’s free!)

7.      Top-rated online systems:  clients can register on to our online platform as well, allowing easy and secure access to many features including scheme documents – in the F&TRC e-excellence survey our online systems came out top of all the insurers assessed.

8.      Flex and voluntary schemes available for all sizes of scheme.  Our quotation system brings flex basis group risk cover to small companies.  More information available here  

9.      Event limits in group life: we routinely provide £300 million cover per location in EC and E14 postcodes.

10.  Excellent financial strength ratings: we are part of Munich Re, one of the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance groups.

6 reasons why Ellipse is your best option for group life and critical illness in flex and voluntary

1.      Flex, flex voluntary and pure voluntary variants of group life and GCI available for schemes of all sizes

2.      Online service for you to access a binding flex quote for your SME clients (up to 500 group life), 300 for GCI, giving you control of the process.  (Larger cases very welcome, too: send requests to sales@ellipse.co.uk

3.      No minimum premiums or flat policy fees brings this within reach of clients of all sizes

4.      You set the level of your commission or fees to make this trade economic for you   

5.      Using our advanced secure web servicing for in force business and the market leading individual underwriting process means you don’t get tied down in administration and can move on to the next earning opportunity

6.      Platform to platform data transfer – if you have the latest version of Staffcare running you are Livewire™ ready     

Peter Fenner
Communication Manager

Improving certainty of cover in group life schemes

Imagine this: you have switched cover for a small group life scheme.  Not long afterwards a member who has been in the scheme for years dies and a claim is submitted.  The claim, though, is rejected by the insurance company, quite legitimately.  It sounds like a nightmare scenario, but it can come about because of the way ‘actively at work’ conditions operate.

One of the most attractive aspects of group schemes is that a lot of cover can be obtained in return for little information about the people to be covered, thanks to the operation of automatic acceptance, also known as ‘free cover’ – limits.  Any benefits that fall within the limit (usually, the vast majority) are provided without asking anything about the members; only benefits above the limit are subject to health and other information.  The reason why cover can be given out on such a liberal basis is that insurers expect groups to consist of an average mix of people in various states of health, but it leaves them open to the risk of providing cover to some individuals who are actually in much poorer health.  It is to filter out at least some such individuals that group risk insurers apply ‘actively at work’ conditions.  These withhold cover for members off sick on the day cover is due to start; if and when they return to work, cover is provided.

Actively at work (AAW) conditions can be worded in various ways, varying in stringency, which can be applied according to the situation and it is at the insurer’s discretion to decide what wording to use in each set of circumstances.  Whichever wording is used, though, if a member falls seriously ill or suffers a life-threatening accident the day before cover starts, their absence from work the next day means they are not covered, even if they had been with a previous insurer up until then (and so would have been covered had the cover not switched from one insurer to another at that point in time).  Nobody could have known beforehand that the lack of cover would arise, so the issue is not about anyone failing to do their job – it is inherent in the way actively at work conditions operate.

This is not just a problem we have been led to consider in the abstract.  Situations where parties have been left without cover can and do arise, and advisers with long experience of group risk business have flagged the problem.  As well our product development being heavily based on adviser feedback, here at Ellipse we also believe in designing out risk from products and processes wherever we can. 

We have come up with an alternative to actively at work conditions that we believe will be easy for clients to understand and work with.  We now ask clients to tell us of employees who, in the past year, have been off sick for four or more whole weeks if the policy covers up to 500 members, or thirteen or more whole weeks where there are 501 or more members.  (In both cases, the whole weeks of absence need not be consecutive – we want to know about people who have had four separate weeks off sick as much as those who took off one continuous block of time.)  The key is that we are asking for information about what has

already happened rather than imposing a condition around what might happen.  Employers should have the information on file as any absence of more than 7 days requires a note from the employee’s doctor to be provided to them by the employee.

Although this approach requires slightly more information from the client before cover begins, the danger of catastrophic gaps in cover – which fall on the parties least able to carry them – is removed.  From a contract certainty point of view this approach is far superior and provides clients and their advisers with a much clearer and more detailed understanding of what is being insured.

Tom Bond, Underwriting Specialist

Opening up flex and voluntary cover to SMEs

One of the key trends in the employee benefits market is the growth of flexible and voluntary benefit schemes.  Where once only large companies could afford to set up the infrastructure necessary to run such schemes, software – middleware is the jargon – is fast becoming available in forms affordable for companies of all sizes.  We are supporting this movement  – after all there needs to be a product to serve this – by offering life and CI flex/voluntary products to schemes of all sizes. 

For advisers who have invested in the middleware to operate these schemes, our online quotes now provides flex and voluntary variants of our group life and group critical illness  products. If your middleware can handle the basics of running flex schemes, we would be delighted to switch on the flex quotes facility, giving you instant online quotes for flex and voluntary group life schemes with up to 500 members or group critical illness ones for up to 300 members.

We have also completed the automated process that allows our group risk administration to send/receive data to/from benefit platforms.  Our latest live links are to the Staffcare software  used by many advisers and JargonFreeBenefits.  This gives a real productivity dividend for all, particularly your clients 

·         Data updates driven automatically from your client’s payroll system

·         All accounts reconciled in the current month

·         Client pays for the cover – by DD – at the time they have it

·         No messy annual reconciliations

·         Totally secure data transfer

·         No backdating of medical underwriting decisions

·         Process efficiencies, ensures sustainably competitive premiums in the long term

Both these initiatives reflect our intention of becoming the group risk insurer of choice for flex and voluntary schemes.

 

Ed Bryan

Head of Distribution