1. Your client contacts us, we validate their policy and then email or post a claim form

2. Once we’ve received the form back, including any requested financial or medical evidence, we review and make a decision

3. Customers are quickly notified of the outcome of their claim, and approved claim payments are in their account within 48 hours.

Find out more about our claims process here

And when it’s not as simple as that, when the decision is not clear-cut, the claim is passed to our escalations committee, a carefully selected group from different parts of the business, who review the details to make sure we consistently do the right thing for your clients (our customers).

We follow the ABI guidelines and they’re clear on what does and doesn’t count as a reportable decline. We have to include fraudulent claims in our declined figures, those where a customer has deliberately withheld information in their application. For example, saying they’ve never drunk alcohol, and then claiming for liver disease clearly as a result of heavy drinking. This is known as ‘Misrepresentation’.

A common example of a claim being declined for not meeting the policy definition would be an income protection customer telling us they can’t work, but their GP/medical consultant telling us they’re fit to work.

You can find out more about the ABI guidelines and what is and isn’t a decline here.

Last year we paid over £45m in claims and you can see all our key protection figures at lv.com/claims and view or download our adviser at a glance summary here

Every single protection customer has free access to the LV= Legal and Wellbeing advice line as soon as their policy is live.

Find out more about our free legal and counselling advice service here