You may have heard that it is Mental Health and Wellbeing Awareness Week.
At Lloyds Banking Group we are proud to be working in partnership with our charity of the year Mental Health UK, with colleagues across the Group volunteering and aiming to raise at least £2 million in 2017.
One in four of us in the UK will be affected by a mental health problem in any given year, and of these around four million will also struggle with their financial wellbeing Here at Scottish Widows Protect, mental health makes up 15% of all disclosures on our protection applications and is our most common disclosure by a considerable margin[2]. There can be a misconception that mental illness disclosures will result in heavy ratings for your clients meaning they can’t afford cover or have to settle for a significant reduction in what they require. Our experience with online underwriting has enabled us to take a more pragmatic approach to our underwriting questions regarding symptoms, duration and time off work, which means we are able to accept 88% of mental illness disclosures at point of sale[3]. From day one, every Scottish Widows Protect policy also comes with Scottish Widows Care, provided in partnership with RedArc. Providing your clients and their families the practical advice and emotional support they’ll need through difficult and traumatic times in their lives (see link below). http://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/extranet/products/protection/products-tools/claims/care You can use our on-line underwriting outcome tool to get indicative terms including mental illness (see link below). http://www.scottishwidowsprotect.co.uk/UnderwritingOutcome [1] Lloyds Banking Group/Mental Health UK [2] Scottish Widows 2016 Underwriting Statistics [3] Scottish Widows 2016 Underwriting Statistics
