Legal & General Individual Protection Announce the Date for Gender Neutral Pricing

LONDON, November 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Legal & General have today announced they will move to gender neutral pricing from 21 November 2012.

From 21 November 2012, all individual protection products will be quoted using gender-neutral pricing. This means that all new life insurance quotes given to customers from that date will show the gender-neutral premiums for both males and females. All quotes will be valid for 90 days from that date.

The industry faces huge challenges in managing the amount of pipeline business in the run up to the deadline, which is just days before the Christmas break. Legal & General believe that as a market leader, they need to be realistic in facing these challenges. Their move to gender-neutral pricing from 21 November will offer certainty to advisers and customers and ensures the compliant control of existing pipeline business.

Their Gender Response Team which launched in September has completed over 60,000 gender-specific application reviews with the single aim of getting business completed before the deadline of 20 December 2012.

Stuart Welch, Actuarial Director for Individual Protection, Legal & General said;

"As the leader in the protection market we've been working hard to ensure our strategy is robust enough to  give certainty to our advisers and customers. That's why we are moving to gender-neutral pricing on 21 November 2012. We've seen a fantastic response to our Gender Response Team which we set up in September to ensure applications are processed quickly and efficiently. Our priority at all times is to ensure customers know the exact status of their cover by midnight on 20 December 2012. And advisers will be able to focus on building their 2013 pipeline as our gender-neutral quotes will be valid for 90 days."

Notes to editors

The information contained in this press release is intended solely for journalists and should not be relied upon by private investors or any other persons to make financial decisions.

The Legal & General Group, established in 1836, is one of the UK's leading financial services companies. As at 30 June 2012, we were responsible for investing £388 billion worldwide on behalf of investors, policyholders and shareholders. We also had over seven million customers in or our life assurance, pensions, investments and general insurance plans.