Hi everyone, I have Matt back with me for the first time of Season 9 and we are focusing on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. HCM is a heart condition that affects approximately 1 in 500 people in the UK and it can potentially be a higher risk for a life insurance claim. We talk about the different types of cardiomyopathy, how they affect the body and the usual causes of cardiomyopathy. Matt takes us through the two types of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and how they can affect the outcomes for protection insurance applications. The key takeaways: There is a genetic link to HCM and it can come up in ..read more

Hi everyone, I am back with Season 9 of the Practical Protection Podcast and we are taking a look at keyperson cover.  Hopefully one of the simpler business protection policies that we can arrange, but I have certainly had some interesting conversations with people that don’t understand what this kind of insurance does. I remember quite a specific debate with a tax adviser who was saying their client needed keyperson cover because they wanted the tax advantages of the premiums, but what they needed the insurance to do was shareholder protection. I stood my ground! The key takeaways: Keyp ..read more

Hi everyone, I have Matt back with me and this time we are focusing on Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). This is an autoimmune condition that increases the chance of someone developing blood clots. More women than men are diagnosed with APS and at the moment there is no specific reason why APS develops. It is thought that a mix of environmental factors can lead to APS developing, but there are still people that are diagnosed with APS where no known cause is found. When applying for protection insurance most insurers will want to know if a person has been diagnosed with APS. It is very likely th ..read more

Hi everyone, I am doing another product feature today with a look into shareholder protection. I can’t remove all the jargon but I’m going to do my best to make it as simple as possible! In this episode I am giving an overview of cross-option and company buy-back shareholder protection options. There are other ways of doing shareholder protection arrangements, but these tend to be the main ones so I’m focusing here. I’m giving you a quick run through key elements of shareholder protection for you to make note of, to give you a bit of a checklist of insurance do’s and dont’s. The key takeaways ..read more

Hi everyone, we are talking about arthritis in our latest episode and taking a closer look at rheumatoid arthritis. When it comes to protection insurance rheumatoid arthritis is going to come up in the application questions at some point. Rheumatoid arthritis and the treatment for it can affect a lot of areas in the body and it’s a condition that tends to get worse over time, so insurers usually want to know about it. You are far more likely to be diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis if you are a woman and if you are over 40. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get it when you are young or if ..read more

Hi everyone, I am taking a bit of a different approach with some of the upcoming podcast episodes and I hope that you find it useful. I am going to take specific protection insurance products and do a summary of how they work and what to look out for as an adviser The first one is focusing upon insurance for Business Property Relief. In this episode I am explaining what BPR is and why it’s so important that we look out for it, as some people might have wandered into an arrangement that could potentially have this tax benefit without even realising it. The life insurance side of things is quite ..read more

Hi everyone, I have Matt Rann back with me for the first time in 2024 and we are talking about heart valve disease and how that mixes with protection insurance. There are a lot of heart conditions that we need to be aware of when applying for protection insurance and many often focus upon the heart muscle and what they are doing. With heart valve disease the focus is specifically upon the valves and how they control the blood flow in the heart. The key takeaways: Understanding what heart valve disease is and what it can meant for a person’s overall health The medical information that you need ..read more

Hi everyone, I am joined today by Paul Beven and Rachel Edwards from Verisk. They are a leader in travel insurance underwriting, so we are taking a step into general insurance for this episode.  Travel insurance is focused upon emergency assistance that you might require when you are on holiday. This could be do with your health, or are number of different situations that you might face. When it comes to health we are talking about the questions that are asked for travel insurance underwriting, the ways that medical risk scores are calculated and how changes to your health before you trav ..read more

Hi everyone, I have Debbie Smith who is the Chief Medical Officer at Swiss Re with me to talk about the trends that she is spotting when it comes to income protection claims. I first met Debbie at the LUCID conference earlier this year and I found her presentation fascinating. So naturally I asked if she could come and share some of her findings with my listeners! Debbie is sharing with us the trend that they are seeing that a higher BMI is often linked to long-term income protection claims. We are talking through what the data is showing, how this can be tricky to fully assess due to differen ..read more

Hi everyone, we are talking about Total Permanent Disability, a potential claimable condition on most UK Critical Illness Contracts. We are talking about how TPD claims work and also the difficulties that can be experienced in placing a claim for this condition. This episode is taking a different approach to usual. As you know we love protection insurance and getting as many people as possible to take it out. But, you will hear this time that both of us are very on the fence as to whether we would recommend someone includes TPD in their critical illness cover, or even take it out ourselves. Th ..read more