Standard Life, the popular international life insurance company, recently revealed that they paid out on 86 per cent of their critical illness claims during the first half of this year. 14 per cent of claims were therefore declined.
Of those that were declined, the insurer stated that 6 per cent did not meet the definitions of their policy and 8 per cent faced being declined through failure to disclose something to the insurer . According to Standard Life the top reasons for claiming were cancer, heart attack, multiple sclerosis, stroke and brain tumour. Over £9.8 million was paid out on 184 separate claims .
The protection marketing manager at Standard Life, Mr. Mick James, said: "The level of declined claims is disappointing. Hopefully the work of the Association of British Insurers, through the Statement of Best Practice, will help reduce the number of declined claims and start to rebuild trust in an industry which strangely enough does not like to decline claims."
Critical illness insurance has been in the news recently because of controversial tactics employed by some insurers to avoid paying out. These include post-claim scouring of medical records in order to find conditions and seek non-disclosure grounds for not paying out.




