Legal & General abolishes ongoing duty of disclosure

Legal & General, UK protection provider, is to simplify the customer application process by abolishing the requirement to notify us of any change to their health or circumstances before their policy starts.

This is known as “ongoing duty of disclosure”.

Until now, Legal & General has followed industry practice by requiring customers to advise us of changes to answers on their application form until their cover commences. Legal & General is the first protection provider in the market to implement this important change, so our existing and future customers will no longer need to worry that a future claim may be turned down because they did not fulfil this policy requirement.

As from Monday 1st October 2007, the ongoing duty of disclosure will no longer apply to all the individual life insurance products offered by Legal & General. This includes term assurance, whole of life, critical illness and income protection.

Russell Whitworth, Legal & General’s Claims and Underwriting Director said: “This is yet another example of how Legal & General is leading best practice in the protection market. In our experience, many people wrongly assume that the disclosure process ends once they have completed the application form. They believe that effectively they are covered once they have sent off their application. In fact a customer isn’t covered until their policy starts and this could be months after they have completed the application form.”

Legal & General will still require customers to be 100% accurate when completing their application form and may decline a claim where they have had not answered all questions honestly at the outset. But we believe this policy change will make the application process easier for our customers and also provide them with further reassurance that valid claims will be paid.

Russ continued: “We have taken the opportunity to bring our practice in line with the expectations of our customers and remove this ongoing responsibility to disclose information, which is often seen as a burden to them.

This market innovation clearly demonstrates our commitment to treating customers fairly by paying all valid claims and to provide customers with the peace of mind they require.”