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Choosing a life insurance broker can be a bit of a minefield. How do you know which company is going to be the most transparent, give you the best value for money, and also give you the best quality available on the market?
Well, quality, value and transparency are our three core values, leading to our overall goal of relentlessly pursuing customers’ best interests. We’d like you, and all of our customers to have the best experience possible when looking into life insurance and other personal protection products like critical illness cover and income protection.
To show you a little bit of what we do here, we’d like to show you some examples of real customers that we have helped with their insurance journey.
It is important to note that when it comes to obtaining life insurance, there is no one that fits all. Every situation is different and can have a different outcome, but both our advice team and guidance team will make your protection journey as smooth as possible.
Please note that names and other small details have been anonymised to protect our client’s privacy. These case studies have been selected at random from our advised department.
Mrs A called us at Cavendish Online after taking out a new mortgage with her partner, Mr A.
With a brand new debt of £200,000, Mrs and Mr A were conscious that they needed a policy in place to protect them if one of them were to pass away.
Mrs A confirmed that they were not at the moment interested in protecting against critical illness or protecting their income as their primary concern first of all was the mortgage.
At first, this case sounds simple enough, afterall, there are life insurance policies that are specifically tailored to be mortgage cover, but there was a complication.
Mrs A told us that she had already been through this process with another broker who was struggling to find a plan within her budget. Whilst Mr A was able to get easily affordable cover, Mrs A had a medical condition in her history that made things a little more complicated.
Not to worry, we are a specialised broker with an amazing advice team on hand to assist clients with pre-existing or prior medical conditions.
In this instance, the medical condition was relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis and it had only been diagnosed a few weeks before our initial call with Mrs A. As the other broker had confirmed, this was quite a tricky one, but our adviser was determined to help!
So our adviser got to work, contacting all insurers on the market to see what we could do for Mrs A.
Within 24 hours we were able to go back to Mrs A with an option for £31 per month (below her initial budget of £40pcm).
This price of course was estimated at this point, and an application and GP report was needed before we could provide a final, definite monthly premium.
Now, GP reports can be a lengthy process, sometimes taking months, and Mrs A and our adviser were keen to wrap up this process ASAP, so our adviser asked the insurer if a specialist letter could override the need for the GP report altogether.
The insurance provider was more than happy to accept the specialist’s notes and actually came back with a final premium £3 cheaper than predicted!
The policy was up and running on the same day and Mrs A and her mortgage were protected.
We then ensured that Mrs A’s policy was written into trust as requested, to help make sure that if the policy were to pay out, the money goes where Mrs A intended.
Mr B also contacted Cavendish Online after taking out a new mortgage with his partner and wanted to ensure that should he pass away, she would not be left with the debt to pay off all on her own.
On the initial call, Mr B told his adviser that he had suffered from a heart attack only three months prior, and he was struggling to find life insurance as a result.
As we’re a specialist broker for customers with pre-existing medical conditions, Mr B contacted our advised department to see if we could help.
This case took a little more research than others, but after a couple of days, our adviser was able to go back to Mr B with an option they could apply for.
Originally, the insurer was looking to get a doctor’s report from Mr B’s GP surgery. Unfortunately, this can be a lengthy process (often taking months) for both the insurer, the GP and ultimately, the customer. So, our adviser negotiated with the insurer to accept a nurse screening instead.
Upon receiving the results, the insurer did decide to increase the premium by £5, but thankfully this was still within Mr B’s budget.
From the initial call to the cover going live it took about 2 - 3 months as Mr B was away from home, so there was a small delay with getting the nurse screening done, as we wanted to make sure that it was comfortably fitting into his schedule. This timescale was still much smaller than expected due to our adviser arranging the nurse screening instead of a doctor’s report.
We always book all our advised customers in for a full cover review around the anniversary of their policy, as life can change a lot in 12 months, but we have Mr B booked in sooner because we have indications that more insurers will be able to offer life insurance, and therefore there might be an even cheaper option available to him.
If you have also suffered from a heart attack, you may find our article - Does life insurance cover heart attack? helpful.
Since 2017, Mr C has been a Cavendish Online customer. When we first spoke to Mr C, he was looking to purchase life insurance and critical illness cover to protect his family if something were to happen to him. In this instance, there was no mortgage to cover, Mr C was simply looking for family cover.
Mr C contacted our advised team as he had a pre-existing medical condition that was making cover difficult to obtain.
The disclosure was chronic hepatitis B, and in 2017, this was a real challenge for us.
We submitted an application that required a report from Mr C’s GP, but unfortunately Mr C was declined life insurance because of his most recent test readings.
So, the only option available at this time was non-medically underwritten cover.
When it comes to life or critical illness insurance, some cover is usually better than none, so Mr C still decided to purchase the policy.
We always arrange annual reviews with our advice customers, so we got back in touch with Mr C a year later to see if there was anything else we could do to help. Mr C decided to take advantage of his review to see if standard cover was now available to him. The indications looked good, so we submitted a new application for him.
Following a GP report, the insurer was satisfied with Mr C's latest test results and were happy to offer him both life insurance and critical illness cover!
Mr C was already happy with the monthly premium he was paying, and requested we set him up with a similarly priced plan. As standard cover is generally cheaper than non-medically underwritten cover, we were able to offer Mr C a much larger and much more comprehensive insurance package.
We’d love to hear your Cavendish Online story, so if you would like to take part and be a case study please get in touch. If we use and publish your case on our website then we’ll send you a £100 amazon voucher as a small thank you!
