ICMIF member Royal London, the UK’s largest life, pensions and investment mutual, has improved its pre-sale underwriting tool to widen the scope of medical conditions covered from 60 to over 3,600. This change to a more flexible customer journey will make it easier and faster for advisers to get indicative underwriting terms.

Advisers can choose to continue to use existing functionality to select from the 60 most commonly disclosed medical conditions during their online journey. However, now, depending on individual client requirements, the new search function will also allow advisers to look across all conditions within the online rules that generate a decision, increasing the search to include 3,633 medical conditions.

Craig Paterson, Chief Underwriter at Royal London, said: “We are always looking at ways we can improve the underwriting service we offer advisers, and we believe this enhancement will mean they will be able to offer their clients a much clearer view of the likely underwriting decision, and any underwriting requirements that may be needed.

“We understand conversations on health conditions can be sensitive and by improving our pre-sale journey we hope these conversations will become easier.”

The usage data will be collected to continually refine and improve the tool going forward.

In another recent announcement, last month, Royal London said it had made a series of improvements to its non-medical limits for life cover, increasing the speed in which it can offer cover to customers and its straight through acceptance rates.

The main change is to increase the sum assured at which Royal London first requires routine medical evidence. There are improvements across all age bandings and the level of sum assured to age 60. For example, for customers aged 29 or under, the initial threshold for non-medical limits evidence has increased from GBP 900,001 to GBP 1,000,001.

Additionally, there are a number of changes to the type of medical evidence requested at certain limits, including:

• Replacing longer paramedical examinations with shorter mini-screen examinations
• Replacing Electrocardiogram (ECG) requests with a simple NT-proBNP blood test
• Reducing the number of GP reports required

Full details of these changes can be found on the Royal London adviser site.

Speaking last month about the improvements to its non-medical limits for life cover, Craig Paterson said: “We continue to focus on improving our customer journey to make it quicker and easier for customers to obtain cover in the shortest time possible. Our latest enhancements not only make life cover more accessible, but they will also reduce requests to General Practitioners, helping to reduce the demand on the NHS.”