Guardian was officially founded in 1821. Over the course of the past 200 years, it has offered various insurance and financial service products including Life Insurance, pensions and annuities.
UK financial services giant ReAssure acquired Guardian in 2016, renaming it ReAssure Life Limited in June of that year.
ReAssure subsequently sold the Guardian brand to Gryphon Group Holdings, which launched Guardian as a new protection insurance provider in 2018.
Guardian Life Insurance is unique in many ways.
For example, instead of traditional joint Life Insurance paying out when the first partner dies, leaving the surviving partner uninsured, Guardian’s dual life cover packages two single policies into one menu plan.
Josh Martin
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
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Guardian Life Insurance Coverage | |
---|---|
Maximum Benefit |
|
Type of Cover |
|
Minimum Entry Age | 18 |
Maximum Entry Age | 65 |
Terminal Illness Cover? | ✅
Enhanced |
Joint Cover? | ✅
Dual cover |
Premium Type |
|
Waiver of Premium | Free and automatic | Optional Critical Illness Cover |
Conditions Covered |
|
Survival Period | 14 days |
Children’s Cover? | An optional add-on for an extra premium (💷) covering children from birth to age 23, paying:
|
Guardian has a £15 million maximum Life Insurance benefit. While there are insurers which offer an unlimited maximum benefit, the reality is that £15 million will be more than sufficient for almost every Life Insurance client.
Guardian lets you increase your benefit without further medical evidence following certain life events. These events are:
The maximum increase is the lower of 25% of your benefit or £50,000, except for taking out a new mortgage / increasing your current mortgage and lengthening your mortgage term.
For a new / increased mortgage, the maximum increase is the lower of 25% of your original benefit or £50,000, capped at the total increase in your mortgage.
Guardian also lets you extend the policy term if you increase the length of your mortgage. This is subject to the policy not exceeding the maximum age for coverage.
Couples benefit from two single Life Insurance policies packaged together in a single menu plan with a premium discount rather than joint cover.
This ensures each partner has their own cover. If both partners died during the policy term, Guardian would therefore pay out twice, once for each partner.
This is opposed to the standard joint life, first death cover many other insurers offer. Here, the policy ceases on the first partner’s death, leaving the surviving partner without cover.
To prevent inflation eroding the purchasing power of your benefit over time, Guardian lets you choose to index-link your benefit. This is known as increasing cover.
Each year, Guardian will increase your benefit in line with Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation. To compensate for this, your premiums will rise by inflation multiplied by 1.5. For example, if inflation is 2% then your benefit will rise by 2% and your premiums by 3.5%.
Guardian will write to you as you approach the policy anniversary asking if you want to take up the benefit increase. You are free to decline. However, if you decline 3 years in a row, Guardian will change your cover from index-linked to Level Term Insurance.
Unlike other insurers, which cap index-linked cover at 10% each year, Guardian doesn’t do this. However, increase of 10% or more may be subject to underwriting.
The maximum amount of Life Insurance you can reach after index-linked benefit increases is £20 million. With Life and Critical Illness Insurance, it is £3 million.
Guardian Anytime and Guardian HALO combine to make up a good package of free additional benefits. This includes access to a 24 / 7 remote GP service, which only a handful of other Life Insurance providers offer.
Guardian pays at least some of your benefit for any diagnosis of cancer, regardless of severity, including low-risk non-melanoma skin cancer.
Guardian pays at least some of your benefit for any diagnosis of cancer, regardless of severity, including low-risk non-melanoma skin cancer.
Guardian Anytime offers a comprehensive package of free additional benefits. For example it provides:
Guardian HALO is Guardian’s expert claims management service. It offers help and advice in a variety of areas relating to a claim, for example:
Guardian includes waiver of premium cover free automatically with both Life Insurance and Critical Illness Cover.
While all insurers offer this as an option, for most it’s an add-on for an extra premium.
Waiver of premium means Guardian will step in to pay your premiums in the following scenarios:
If you can’t do your job due to illness or injury, Guardian will waive premiums until you’re either well enough to return to work, you reach retirement or your policy expires.
Guardian will not backdate waiver of premium or refund premiums, so it’s important to let them know as soon as you think you’ll be making a waiver of premium claim.
Waiver of premium will also cover Children’s Critical Illness Cover if you’ve added this to your plan. There’s no limit on the number of times you can use waiver of premium and using it will have no impact on any claim you make.
Guardian does not offer joint Life Insurance. Instead, it packages together two single policies for couples needing joint cover into a single under a menu plan with a premium discount.
This means the policy covers both lives separately. If one partner passes away or becomes critically ill, the other partner therefore retains their coverage.
This is in contrast to most other insurers which offer joint life, first death cover. Here, if one partner dies or becomes critically ill, the policy pays out and then ends. The surviving partner is then left without cover.
As with all insurers, Guardian Life Insurance includes Terminal Illness Cover as standard. This pays out your Life Insurance benefit early if a doctor diagnoses you with less than 12 months to live.
However, unique to Guardian, the Terminal Illness Cover kicks in to pay out if you are diagnosed with:
It will pay out regardless of how long a doctor believes you will live after the diagnosis.
The combination of Guardian HALO and Guardian Anytime make for a decent free additional benefits package.
Guardian offers access to remote GP services, a second medical opinion service, legal assistance such as estate planning and bereavement counselling after the loss of a loved one.
With Critical Illness Insurance, you must meet the definition of the condition in question the insurer lays out in its policy terms. If you don’t meet the severity required in that definition, you can’t usually make a claim.
As a result, many policies exclude certain low-grade, low-risk cancers, particularly some skin cancers. However, Guardian promises at least some of your benefit for all cancer diagnoses, regardless of severity.
For example, Guardian pays the lower of 10% of your benefit or £50,000 for low-risk, non-melanoma skin cancer. This rises to the lower of 25% of your benefit or £50,000 for high-risk non-melanoma skin cancer.
Guardian requires less medical evidence for certain Critical Illness Insurance claims. For example, it will pay out for many cancer, heart attack and stroke diagnoses based on evidence from your consultant rather than requiring full medical reporting.
Guardian includes Total Permanent Disability Cover as standard with its Critical Illness Insurance. This pays out if you become so completely and totally disabled through illness or injury that you can’t ever work again.
For many insurers, this is an optional extra for an additional premium.
Child Critical Illness Cover is an optional add-on for an extra premium. It’s not included free as standard with adult cover.
While this does mean you don’t pay for a service you won’t use if you don’t have children, many other providers offer it free. If you have children or plan to start a family, it’s worth noting.
However, if you do opt to add child cover to your adult Critical Illness Insurance for an extra premium, Guardian’s policy has a number of unique features. These make it stand out among its peers. For example:
Critical Illness Insurance definitions naturally change and evolve over time. This happens with all insurers and is usually in response to factors such as changes in medical science.
However, if definitions improve, Critical Illness Insurance providers only tend to offer these improved definitions to new clients. Existing policyholders stick with the definitions in force at the time they took out cover.
Guardian, on the other hand, promises to offer policy upgrades to all existing policyholders as it makes improvements to their critical illness definitions. More clients therefore get to benefit from them.
With Critical Illness Insurance, every insurer has a survival period. This is the length of time you must survive after your diagnosis for the insurer to pay your Critical Illness Insurance claim.
With Guardian, this survival period is 14 days. There are insurers which allow you to claim providing you survive 10 days.
As Guardian has only been offering Life and Critical Illness Insurance under its current brand since 2018, it’s yet to publish detailed claims statistics, for example the percentage of successful claims.
While it’s likely these will come with time, it does make Guardian slightly less transparent on this front than the rest of the providers in the market.
As with any insurance policy your budget can often dictate the policy you choose to take out. To help with this we’ve provided example costs for Guardian Life Insurance based on varying ages, with and without Critical Illness cover below.
To calculate these quotes we have assumed that the individual looking for cover wants £250,000 Life and Critical Illness cover:
30 Years Old | 40 Years Old | 50 Years Old | Life Cover Only |
---|---|---|
£7.19 | £12.53 | £23.16 | Life & Critical Illness Cover |
£55.93 | £101.10 | £182.92 |
Guardian provide a very comprehensive Life Insurance policy but there are many other insurers you should consider when doing your research.
For further information we have written a review of the top UK Life Insurance providers breaking down their policies by the key factors you should be considering when deciding on your cover.
If you are confident in what you need you can compare life insurance quotes and apply online for cover using our calculator.
If it has all become too confusing we have a team of expert advisers who can help answer your questions, just pop us a call on 02084327333.
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For help and fee-free Life Insurance advice, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Pop us a call on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.
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