Monday, August 18, 2014

Understanding the Changes to Critical Illness Insurance Benefits Guidelines

Insurance E-mart had brought to you hot off the press Life Insurance Association Singapore (LIA)’s press release on Changes to Critical Illness Benefits Guidelines. 

Here's a quick take away on the key points. For details refer to the full release: http://www.insuranceemart.com/2014/07/changes-to-critical-illness-insurance.html


What are the guidelines about?

Here are the key points:
1) Revised standard definitions for the severe stage of 37 common Critical Illnesses
2) Flexibility for more medical conditions to be covered 


When?

1 Feb 2015. But..
CI products using preceding definitions will no longer be sold from 1 February 2015. And effective immediately, CI benefits offered under new individual or group insurance policies may be launched with the two changes.


Why?

In a word - “relevance”; for the standard definitions:
Standard definitions for the severe stage of some of the 37 common CIs have been updated to reflect advances in clinical practices, medical science and technology which have impacted certain illnesses in their diagnosis and treatment.

First introduced in 2003, the rationale for LIA’s standardisation of CI definitions remains unchanged, which is that standardisation provides greater transparency for customers to easily assess and compare the different insurance plans available. 

“Innovation” for “flexibility for more medical conditions to be covered”:


The revised guidelines encourage life insurers to innovate products and services to better meet the evolving needs of Singaporeans. 

Current insurance plans cover up to a maximum of 30 CIs. The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) has been consulted and hence under the new framework, any number of medical conditions can now be covered under a CI insurance plan, and insurers can also offer single-illness CI insurance plans. 


So what does that mean for consumers?
In the next post, we will take a closer look at what the changes mean for consumers, and how we view the development.


You may be interested to read:
Difference between Medical insurance and Critical Illness insurance?




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