Phoenix Group, Europe's largest life and pensions consolidator has introduced paperless death claims to significantly improve the process for claiming on life insurance policies valued at £10k or less. Phoenix Group has c2.1m policies that can now be claimed using this new process.

In October 2018, 4,471 claims, equating to just over 48% of all claims across Phoenix Life, including SunLife Guaranteed over 50 policies (also part of the Phoenix Group) under £10,000, were processed via the new paperless system.

As well as simplifying the claims process, paperless claims are making receipt of payment quicker for customers, with 22% of claims paid within 3 days of notification of a death and 43% paid within 10 days. Furthermore, Phoenix has ensured the service remains personalised to the claimant in recognition of its sensitive nature.

David Woollett, Customer Director at Phoenix Life comments, “Dealing with the processes associated with bereavement can be difficult in an already stressful and deeply upsetting time for families. This meant it was a particularly important first phase for us, to ease the claims process for beneficiaries of our life insurance policies. We are pleased to see such a large proportion of claimants using the new service and we hope to extend it to other types of policies in the future as we look to make more of our services available online.”

For customer security, policies that can be claimed using the new process must be worth £10k or lower and meet the following criteria:

• Not assigned or in a trust
• Grant of Probate is not being obtained
• The claimant must be a spouse or child
• Death certificate entry number and Registration district is available

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Enquiries

Shellie Wells
Head of Corporate Communications
Phoenix Group
020 3735 0922 / 07872 414 137
shellie.wells@thephoenixgroup.com

Darcy Lillie
Media Relations Consultant
Phoenix Group
020 3735 0102 / 07814 773 280
darcy.lillie@thephoenixgroup.com

Notes to editors

Phoenix Group is Europe’s largest life and pensions consolidator, specialising in the acquisition and management of closed life insurance and pension funds – known as heritage books. Phoenix is the largest consolidator of heritage life insurance books in Europe but also runs an open book underpinned by a strategic partnership with Standard Life Aberdeen. The Group is a member of the FTSE 250 index, and has over 10 million policies and £240 billion of assets under management – including the recently acquired Standard Life Assurance business. With operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany, the Group has five operating life companies which hold policyholder assets, and a distribution business, SunLife Limited.