Now, more than ever, it is important that customers maintain the protection cover they have, and where possible, we’ve added extra flexibility to our protection products. If your clients’ income has been impacted by coronavirus, we have introduced three options for our products, so your clients can adapt their policies to their personal circumstances.

We hope the ability to defer premiums will provide support to those who need it the most. We want to ensure customers keep their cover, but we know once a customer has built up arrears, it may be difficult to bring the plan back on track, so it is important to keep this in mind when discussing the options with your clients.

Deferred premiums

We have introduced a new option whereby protection customers can defer their premium payments for up to three months, without any reduction in cover, if they’re experiencing financial difficulties.

If any of your clients with a Zurich protection policy need a premium deferral, please ask them to get in touch with us directly.

How does it work?

Please ask your client to call our customer service team on 0370 241 6945 and ask for a premium deferral. We will discuss their personal situation and explain the options available to them, including premium deferral. Once they’ve confirmed they’d like to defer their premiums, we’ll email them to let them know that their premiums have been deferred, the date of premium re-commencement and the repayment method.

To find out more about how premium deferral works please visit our adviser FAQ page. https://www.zurichintermediary.co.uk/en-gb/have-you-talked-about/articles/2020/4/helping-our-customers-during-coronavirus

Career break

Our Income Protection product, launched in September 2018, already allows customers to take a career break which lets them reduce their monthly benefit to a minimum of £250 per month or their premiums to a minimum of £5 per month, for up to 12 months.

For Income Protection customers whose policies were purchased on the Life Protection Platform starting on or before 31 March 2020, we’re waiving the requirement that policies must be in force for 12 months before the career break option can be used.

How does it work?

Your clients don’t need to contact us to take advantage of this policy option. You can process the career break on their behalf by using the policy servicing capability on the adviser portal. This will change the policy to the lower level of the cover and update the premium. At the end of the 12 months the policy will revert to the original level automatically.

Your client doesn’t need to provide us with any evidence to take advantage of this option.

To find out more about how the Career break option works please visit our adviser FAQ page. https://www.zurichintermediary.co.uk/en-gb/have-you-talked-about/articles/2020/4/helping-our-customers-during-coronavirus

Decreasing and increasing level of cover

Today we’re introducing a new policy option whereby our Life Protection Platform customers (all policy numbers have the prefix PR) can choose to decrease their sum assured for 6 months and then increase it back to the original level without the need for any underwriting.

How does it work?

If any of your clients with a Zurich Life Protection Platform policy would like to use this option, please ask them to call us on 0370 241 6945. We will discuss their financial situation, and if they are experiencing difficulties, we’ll explain the options available to them, including the option to reduce their cover for six months.

If your client decides to reduce their cover, we will refer them back to you to agree the level of reduction in cover. You can reduce the cover to any level, subject to the premium remaining at our minimum premium level or higher.

As the adviser, you’ll then be able to make the appropriate reduction using our policy servicing capability on the adviser portal. This will automatically reduce the cover and generate all the updated policy documents for the customer.

Shortly before the end of the six months we’ll contact your client to remind them that their cover will automatically increase back to the original level at the end of the period.

To find out more about decreasing your client’s cover please visit our adviser FAQ page. https://www.zurichintermediary.co.uk/en-gb/have-you-talked-about/articles/2020/4/helping-our-customers-during-coronavirus