UK health and life insurer The Exeter has revealed that finding cover for clients with multiple or pre-existing health conditions is a key challenge for 62% of advisers. Furthermore, 30% of advisers stated that the ability to cover such clients is the most important element of working with an insurer.
Pre-existing conditions a challenge across all product ranges
In the survey, the respondents overwhelmingly agreed that pre-existing medical conditions would be the biggest challenge for private health insurance in 2025 (37%). However, pre-existing medical conditions were also expected to be a key challenge cited by advisers working in the income protection and life insurance sector. Almost a third (29%) of advisers expected to face this challenge when discussing income protection, with one in four life insurance advisers (26%) stating this as a challenge during advice conversations.
Wider challenges advisers expect to face during client conversations vary depending on the product range. Health insurance advisers also foresee challenges when it comes to ‘explaining the benefits of different policies’ offered by providers (31%) and helping clients to overcome `perceptions of cost’ (35%).
When it comes to discussing income protection, advisers were chiefly worried about ‘overcoming perceptions of cost’ (36%), ‘clarifying policy exclusions and conditions’ (30%), and ‘explaining the benefits of individual policies’ (29%). These challenges were similar for advisers discussing life insurance products, with advisers once again citing challenges around ‘overcoming perceptions of cost’ (38%), clarifying policy exclusions and conditions' (33%), and ‘explaining the benefits of individual policies’ (28%).
Jack Southcott, Head of Protection Propositions at The Exeter, comments: “Living with pre-existing or multiple medical conditions can pose many challenges for individuals, and unfortunately, this can also prevent them from buying insurance products. In recent years, health and protection providers have taken positive steps to further grow the market by making products more accessible to more people, including those with pre-existing medical conditions. As we continue to develop our propositions, there is the potential to further improve accessibility to the products we offer, so that more people can benefit from the peace of mind that insurance provides.”
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