Cigna New Zealand has announced new non-medical limits for several of its product suites, with CEO Gail Costa noting that the process of getting medical tests for new policy applications is often “time consuming” for both advisers and customers.
Where no medical tests are required, Cigna will now have a policy limit of $2.5 million for customers aged 0-45, with the limit decreasing with each subsequent age bracket.
The highest limit will be for customers aged 50 or less who have completed the full set of required health tests, with their new policy limit set to $4+ million.
The new limits are active immediately, and will apply to Cigna’s Assurance Extra and Business Assurance policies. Advisers have access to the new limits via Cigna’s Adviser Hub, along with the latest version of its underwriting guide.
Costa says the changes have been made as part of a wider set of recent improvements, which include its new online quote tool for advisers, new product and pricing enhancements and the doubling of commission payments for the months of June and July.
“This year we’ve focused on making it easier for advisers to do business with us by improving our tools and processes to support them through the advice journey, and transform the way we bring new customers on board,” Costa said.
“There are a lot of changes that we’ve been working on this year, and those have come to market over the first quarter. Some of those were designed to catch us up, and some to put us ahead – but we’ve had a lot of feedback from the adviser market, and they’ve found us very refreshing.”
Read more: Cigna doubles adviser commission payments
Costa says that feedback from the adviser channel has been very positive since Cigna’s acquisition of OnePath Life, with advisers appreciating what they saw as a new entrant to the market.
“Cigna has been here for over 100 years with a significant global company behind us, so in the beginning we weren’t sure how they would respond to the Cigna brand,” she noted. “But we’ve seen a lot of interest from advisers, and we’re seeing good growth from that channel.”
