Momentum does cover the widest range of critical illness conditions

Stephen van Niekerk, Head of Retail Life Insurance Products at MMI Holdings.

Stephen van Niekerk, Head of Retail Life Insurance Products at MMI Holdings stated that “Clients are looking for broader critical illness cover and this is reflected in our product history. With the rapid developments in the medical fraternity it has become vital for insurance companies to structure risk products that can support these advances but affordability must remain top-of-mind.”

He made this statement at the annual DNA of Financial Wellness Partnership Forums, aimed at financial advisers that are currently underway across the country. These prestigious forums serve as the perfect platform for Momentum to launch their new critical illness benefits.

He continued by saying “Based on our extensive experience and continuous analysis of a wide range of market intelligence, we are launching new critical illness benefits that are set to redefine the risk industry, forever.” Since Momentum Myriad already offers clients the most comprehensive critical illness cover in the market, it was an easy transition from the current benefits to the new benefits which consist of:

• The Complete Critical Illness Benefit and
• The Complete Enhanced Critical Illness Benefit.
• The Specified Claim Event Enhancer, as an ancillary benefit, can be added to the Complete Critical Illness Benefit to increase clients’ pay-outs on qualifying claims in the heart attack, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), stroke and cancer categories in the SCIDEP grid to 100 per cent.

Taking this one step further and settling the debate as to which company covers the widest range of critical illness conditions, Momentum also introduced another ‘world-first’ by way of their new Breadth of Cover Guarantee™. This guarantee provides clients with unsurpassed breadth of cover by guaranteeing that they cover all conditions covered by other local insurers and more.

Van Niekerk stated that “Clients and advisers are unfortunately not always able to make an accurate assessment of which benefit provides better breadth of cover and often competitor comparisons only focus on specific events without giving a complete picture. We cleared up any confusion in this regard by introducing a one-of-a-kind Breadth of Cover Guarantee where Momentum Myriad guarantees to cover any condition covered by the critical illness benefits of other local insurers. We believe modern ‘best of breed’ critical illness benefits should:

• Provide early pay-outs in line with early detection trends;
• Offer unsurpassed breadth of cover;
• Provide broad, child specific critical illness cover;
• Provide reinstatement of cover after a claim event;
• Offer appropriate pay-out levels to ensure cover remains affordable ;
• Be simple to understand and not create unnecessary complexity for clients; and
• Make provision for additional payments, over and above any initial lump sum payment, so that cover never runs out.”

Expand our innovative base

He further added that “Critical illness benefits in South Africa has evolved faster than anywhere in the world and companies have regularly updated their benefits to include new claim events and in this way increase their breadth of cover offerings. With this in mind, our newly designed critical illness benefits cater for these requirements and so much more.

Complete Critical Illness Benefit

This benefit has been designed to offer clients tiered pay-outs across all benefit categories for different severity levels. This allows for a smooth progression of payment levels in line with increased severity of conditions. As a result client needs are met as they arise; paying out a smaller percentage on diagnosis of lower severity events (as defined) and more if and when the condition progresses.

The new Complete Critical Illness Benefit will follow the ASISA SCIDEP grid pay-out guidelines with higher pay-outs for certain severities on cancer and coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG). It also includes the previous ‘Plus’ benefits (i.e. pay-out percentages below 25 per cent), enhanced critical illness cover for children, a new early cancer category, reinstatement of all claim event categories for unrelated claims and the ‘world-first’ Breadth of Cover Guarantee.

Specified Claim Event Enhancer

This benefit provides maximum pay-outs on the claim event categories in the SCIDEP grid that represents approximately 70 per cent of critical illness claims, as experienced by Momentum. This new ancillary benefit thus provides clients with absolute peace of mind in knowing that they will receive a 100 per cent claim pay-out on the major claim events.

Complete Enhanced Critical Illness Benefit

The thinking behind this new benefit was twofold: we wanted to still offer clients the most comprehensive critical illness cover in the market for the broadest number of conditions but we also wanted to include the highest claim pay-out levels. The outcome of these ambitious objectives was the Complete Enhanced Critical Illness Benefit which elevates the SCIDEP grid definitions as well as all the other 50 and 75 per cent severity claim events to 100 per cent.

To keep things simple, the Complete Enhanced Critical Illness Benefit will cover the same events and have the same claim categories as the Complete Critical Illness Benefit and the only difference is the pay-out levels. This benefit also includes enhanced critical illness cover for children, a new early cancer category, reinstatement of all claim event categories for unrelated claims and the world-first Breadth of Cover Guarantee.”

Interpret industry trends accurately

Van Niekerk stated that “More than a decade has passed since Myriad introduced its critical illness benefits and there have been a number of advances and learnings during this time which inspired us to include new features and expand on existing benefits. Over and above the Breadth of Guarantee, the following features are also automatically included in our two new critical illness benefits:

Critical illness cover for children

With the overall increase in critical illness events in our population, as is the case world-wide, we believe it is necessary to increase the number of child specific critical illness conditions for the new benefits.

The newly launched critical illness benefits will continue to offer new clients free critical illness cover for children but now provide an additional 13 child-specific claim events and extends the entry age to birth, for example congenital birth defects right through to juvenile arteritis. Even more impressive is the fact that the amount of critical illness cover for children will increase from the previous maximum cover amount of R125 000 to R250 000, still free of charge under the parents’ critical illness cover on our new benefits.

Early cancer detection

As a result of the phenomenal advances in the medical field, early detection and intervention for a number of diseases including cancer, has become top-of-mind.

Based on the rise in the incidents of cancer and growing awareness of the need to be screened for the disease, we have decided to include an additional nine early cancer definitions in our new critical illness benefits, for example in situ “pre malignant” stomach cancer and in situ early breast cancer that requires specific treatment.

Stephen concludes by saying that “We have listened to our clients and adjusted critical illness benefits in a way that redefined the concept of breadth of cover. We can confidently state that we know the business of critical illness cover best and our forward-thinking products firmly support this.”