Royal London Life Insurance [REVIEW]

Who Are Royal London?

Royal London began as a friendly society in 1861, later changing to a mutual society in 1908. Today, Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company.

Its life cover has been designed to make it easy to customise and adapt with life’s changes. As a provider, Royal London prides itself on its exceptional service. It has won 5 stars for its protection service for 9 years in a row.

Several brands previously operated under the Royal London brand, such as Bright Grey Scottish Provident. However, Royal London unified them beneath the single Royal London brand in 2014.

Royal London Life Insurance Policy Overview

• Unlimited Maximum Benefit
  Unlimited maximum Life Insurance benefit for level and decreasing cover, so you can pick a sum of your choosing
• Helping Hand
  Access support services via Helping Hand to manage symptoms and help with recovery after an illness
• Additional Critical Illness Cover
  Opt for Critical Illness Cover for an extra premium, which pays your full benefit if you develop one of 46 critical conditions
• Dual Life Cover
  Optional dual cover for Joint Life Insurance so each partner gets a separate policy packaged into a single menu plan. The surviving partner therefore retains cover after the first partner dies.

What Does Royal London Life Insurance Cover?

Royal London’s ethos is about ‘protecting today, and investing in tomorrow’. This informs the kind of Life Insurance and Critical Illness Cover it provides, and the extra support services on offer.

Royal London Life Insurance Key Policy Factors

To help give you an overview of Royal London’s Life Insurance cover we’ve outlined some of its key policy factors below.

Guaranteed Insurability

Like many competitive providers, Royal London offers a Guaranteed Insurability option. This lets you increase your benefit without further underwriting if you go through significant life events:

• Marriage, or entering into a civil partnership
• Divorced, or dissolution of a civil partnership
• Birth or adoption of a child
• Increase your mortgage
• Get an increase in salary.

To make use of this, you must inform Royal London within 6 months of the event and be under the age of 55. If it’s a joint plan, both individuals must be under 55 at the time an increased benefit is requested. Your original policy must also have been accepted on Royal London’s standard terms.

The maximum increase you can request is the lower of:

• 50% of your original benefit
• £200,000 (for cover payable as a lump sum)
• £10,000 per year for cover payable as regular benefits (for example, Family Income Benefit).

Increasing Cover Available

Royal London also gives you the option of taking out Life Insurance on an increasing basis. This helps to ensure that inflation doesn’t erode the purchasing power of your benefit over time. If you select this option, you’re able to choose which kind of increasing cover you’d like:

• Indexed Cover
  Your benefit rises each year in line with the Retail Prices Index rate of inflation. Increases are capped at a maximum annual increase of 10% per year
• Fixed Increasing Cover
  Your benefit rises each year by a percentage you choose, between 2% and 5%.

In both cases, your premiums will rise by the percentage increase in your benefit multiplied by 1.2. With increasing Life insurance, your maximum benefit cannot exceed £5 million. When you add Critical Illness Cover to increasing Life Insurance, your benefit cannot exceed £1.2 million.

Royal London will write to you at least a month before your increase is due to take place. You can decline the increase as long as you notify Royal London five days before it takes effect.

If you decline the increase for two years in a row, your cover will change from Increasing to Level. You won’t be offered any further increases for the remainder of your policy term.

Bradley Fedarb
Independent Protection Expert

Excellent Paid Child Critical Illness Cover

Royal London doesn’t include children’s Critical Illness Cover free with adult cover. However, if you pay extra to add it you get multiple benefits most other insurers don’t include.

For example, few other providers in the market pay out for pregnancy complications. Most also exclude Total Permanent Disability cover for children. Royal London is one of the only insurers that pays out for both.

Children’s Critical Illness Cover Conversion Option

This option is available to children who are covered by enhanced Children’s Critical Illness Cover on a parent’s policy. They can convert this to an adult Critical Illness policy within six months of the following:

• The child’s 21st birthday
• The child leaving full-time education between their 21st and 23rd birthday
• The child’s 23rd birthday if they are still in full-time education.

Separation Benefit

Royal London lets you separate joint life plans into two separate policies. This only applies to policies which have been taken out to cover a mortgage. But, it can be used on both Joint Life Insurance and Joint Life and Critical Illness policies.

To use this option, you either have to rearrange your joint mortgage to be in the name of one partner. Or, one partner must take out a new mortgage on a new home.

Renewable Option

If your terms state that your cover is renewable, you can choose to extend your policy for a further 5 or 10 years. Your cover will be provided under the same terms it was originally accepted under.

You cannot use this option if you exceed the maximum age at the time you wish to renew your cover.

Royal London Life Insurance Additional Benefits

As well as offering a comprehensive policy, Royal London also offer a range of free additional benefits with its Life Insurance.

Helping Hand

Royal London’s extra benefits are offered under their Helping Hand service. This offers a range of support services to help you stay fit and healthy. They can also help to prevent any health issues from worsening. These services include:

• Nurse support from RedArc: Speak to a dedicated nurse, who’ll create a personal support plan for your situation
• Health Hero: 24/7 digital GP access
• Thrive: An app to help improve mental wellbeing
• Personal Activity Intelligence: Track and monitor your fitness levels
• TrackActiveMe: Assess musculoskeletal problems, receive physiotherapy advice, and access personalised exercises.

You can also access help with certain legal matters, such as probate and inheritance tax. Career coaching is also available. Most importantly, Helping Hand offers free rehabilitation services after a critical illness.

It provides dedicated cardiac and oncology nurses to help you after a heart attack or cancer diagnosis. This might include:

• Second medical opinions
• Arranging complementary therapies
• Help re-evaluating your lifestyle to aid recovery.

If you’ve suffered a stroke, the team can even put you in touch with speech and language therapists to improve your communication.

The Helping Hand support services are a great additional benefit. Royal London includes them for free as part of their Life Insurance policies.

Accessing such a support service can be invaluable during such difficult times.

Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry

Funeral Benefit

If your Life Insurance claim is tied up in probate, Royal London will advance a portion of it for your funeral. They will pay up to £10,000 of your Life Insurance benefit to a funeral director to cover the expenses.

How Does Royal London Life Insurance Compare?

To help you compare Royal London against other UK providers we’ve highlighted some key points that make it stand out from its competitors.

Dual Life Cover

Most insurers only offer joint life, first death Life Insurance for couples who take out cover together. This pays out on the first partner’s death and then ends, leaving the surviving partner without cover.

Royal London offers Dual-Life Insurance. This covers both of you with two separate policies under a single menu plan. So, if one person dies, the surviving partner keeps their own cover. Also, the policy will pay out twice if you both pass away during the policy term; once for each person.

Total Permanent Disability Cover As Standard

Royal London includes Total Permanent Disability Cover as standard with Critical Illness Cover. This pays out a claim if you become so disabled that you can’t ever work again. Many insurers only offer this as an optional add-on for an extra premium.

Free Critical Illness Rehabilitation With Helping Hand

Many providers offer medical services as part of their extra benefits offering. However, few tailor them specifically to critical illnesses.

Helping Hand includes access to specialist cardiac, oncology and stroke nurses. This means you can use free rehabilitation services if you get cancer, or suffer a heart attack or stroke. These represent the most common Critical Illness Insurance claims.

Advance Surgery Benefit

With Critical Illness Insurance, Royal London pays out as soon as you’re on the NHS waiting list for one of the 14 surgeries it covers. You don’t have to wait until you’ve had the procedure to claim.

That means you receive your claim faster, which can be useful if you cannot work while awaiting your operation.

Child Critical Illness Cover Not Free With Adult Cover

Children’s Critical Illness Cover is an optional add-on for an extra premium. It’s not included free as standard with adult cover.

While this does mean you don’t pay for a service you won’t use if you don’t have children, many other providers offer it free. If you have children or plan to grow your family, this is worth noting.

For example, it includes the following cover:

• Your child suffers a terminal illness
• Your child meets the Total Permanent Disability definition
• Until your child reaches age 21, or age 23 if in full-time education.

Most other providers exclude Total Permanent Disability from children’s cover. And few other providers cover your children until turn 23 when in full-time education.

How Much Does Royal London Life Insurance Cost?

Your Life Insurance premiums can vary based on your age, occupation and health factors.

So you can get a feel for how much your cover might cost, we’ve provided some examples below. The premiums are based on varying ages, and show costs with and without Critical Illness cover.

To calculate these quotes, we’ve assumed that the individual looking for cover wants £250,000 of cover, and:

• Needs a decreasing term
• Wants the cover for 25 years
• Is in a low-risk, office-based role
• Has no pre-existing conditions
• Is a non-smoker.

Life Insurance Only

Life Insurance & Critical Illness Cover

Compare Life Insurance Quotes & Get Expert Advice

As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when you’re taking out Life Insurance and Critical Illness Cover.

With so many factors and lots of different terminology, it can be tricky to do an accurate comparison between providers. We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to help you compare different kinds of life insurance.

Or, if you know what you’re looking for, use our handy online quote tool to compare costs and apply online.

If it all gets a bit confusing, or you feel you’d benefit from free, expert advice, you can get in touch with us. Here at Drewberry, we have a team of specialist regulated advisers who are on hand to help you find the best life insurance for you.

Why Speak to Us?

We started Drewberry™ because we were tired of being treated like a number.

We all deserve a first class service when it comes to issues as important as protecting our health and our finances. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.

• There is no fee for our service
• We are an award winning 🏆 independent insurance broker who works with all the leading UK insurers
• You’ll speak to a dedicated expert from start to finish
• We are very proud of the 3900 and growing independent client reviews rating us at 4.92 / 5
• Claims support when you need it most.
• We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. You can find us on the financial services register here 🧐

For help and fee-free Life Insurance advice, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Pop us a call on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk