Asteron Life unveils product enhancements

Executive Manager Life Portfolio & New Business, Claire Sutton, says Asteron Life is continuously listening to feedback from customers and advisers about their experiences and responding through evolving product offerings and improving service.

"It’s key that our range of covers continue to add value for our customers, policies and terms are easy to understand, and insurance remains as affordable and accessible as possible. We know that these things really matter for our customers and advisers. We also worked hard to ensure that these improvements have not increased customer premiums, given we know how tough it is for many New Zealanders right now," says Sutton.

What’s new?

New built-in benefits include:

- Repatriation benefit on personal and business Life Cover.

- Terminal specific condition advancement benefit on personal Life Cover.

- Reduction in waiting period benefit on Income Protection and Mortgage and Living Cover.

- Cover conversion benefit on Business Disability Cover and Farmers Disability Cover.

In addition to the above new benefits:

- Enhancements to the Funeral benefits on Life Cover, Kids Cover and Business Expenses.

- Enhancements to two definitions for Trauma Recovery and 11 definitions for Major Trauma.

- To align with Income Protection, the requirement for 14 days total disability as part of the waiting period has been removed from Business Disability Cover, Farmers Disability Cover and Business Expenses Cover.

- Added Premium and cover suspension to the optional Needlestick benefit.

- Removal of some restrictions from various benefits such as Specific injury support - Lump sum and Monthly, Trauma reinstatement option and the Crisis benefit within the optional Immediate assist package.

What’s changing?

To further assist with customer understanding as part of Asteron Life’s plain language commitment, changes have been made to the wording of policies to provide customers with an increased level of comfort around their cover. Here are a few of these changes:

- A new definition for congenital conditions under Kids Cover has been added to provide customers comfort around knowing when this exclusion might apply.

- A number of terms have been clarified throughout the policies, including Income update benefit and optional Terminal illness support benefit.

Sutton says all enhancements apply from 25 March 2024 to new Personal and Business Insurance. They will also be passed back to applicable in-force policies sold since 2004. There is nothing customers or advisers need to do to receive these.