Use this glossary of common insurance terms to help you understand words and phrases you may not have come across before. Detailed explanations of our products can be found in the Plan Provisions document. If you have any specific questions please contact us.
Benefit: Money we pay to you if you make a successful claim under the plan.
Date of expiry: The date a cover ends. The date of expiry of each of your covers is shown on the plan schedule.
Decreasing account: A plan account that decreases in value over the life of the plan. It decreases in the same way as a repayment mortgage that has a 10% annual equivalent interest rate. If the plan is fixed term, you can choose to have a decreasing account. If you have Disability Cover, you can also choose for it to decrease in this way.
Deferred period: The period during which an insured person must be ill or disabled before we will pay any benefit.
Disability Cover: Disability Cover pays one or more lump sums if you become disabled because of an accident or illness. You can be covered for several different categories of disability, from temporary disability that stops you working in the short term, to severe disability that affects you for the rest of your life.
Education Cover: Education Cover provides a range of benefits to cover the expenses associated with your child’s education.
Family Income Cover: Family Income Cover pays a regular monthly benefit for a fixed period of time if you die or are diagnosed with a terminal illness. If you have selected Family Income Cover that provides a benefit on diagnosis of a serious illness, a benefit will also be paid if you are diagnosed with a serious illness that we cover and that meets our definition of that condition.
Fixed term: The term of a cover is how long the cover lasts. A fixed term has a defined date of expiry.
Guaranteed Insurability options: Guaranteed Insurability options allow you to increase certain covers when particular events happen in your life, without giving us any more information about your health.
Income Protection Cover: Income Protection Cover pays you a regular income if you become incapacitated and cannot work, and your incapacity meets our definitions.
Indexed account: A plan account that is designed to increase in value on each plan anniversary. The increase is a percentage of the current plan account. This percentage will be equal to the Retail Prices Index that applies exactly five months before the plan anniversary, subject to a maximum of 10% and a minimum of 0%.
If you have Disability Cover or Income Protection Cover or Family Income Cover, you can also choose for any of these covers to increase in this way.
Joint life plan: A plan that provides cover for two people. We call these two people the first person covered and the second person covered.
Joint life first death: Life Cover where we pay the benefit when the first of the persons covered dies or is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Joint life second death: Life Cover where we pay the benefit when the last of the persons covered dies or is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Level account: A plan account that stays the same unless you make a successful claim or change a cover. If you have Disability Cover or Income Protection Cover, you can also choose one or both of these covers to stay level in this way.
Life-changing event: A single identifiable event or condition that causes you to make a claim.
Life Cover: Life Cover pays a lump sum if the person covered dies, or is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Occupation: A trade, profession or type of work undertaken for profit or pay. It is not a specific job with any particular employer and is independent of location and availability.
Optional Serious Illness Cover for Children: Optional Serious Illness Cover for Children pays a lump sum if your child suffers from a serious illness that we cover.
Own occupation: The full-time occupation you had immediately before the start of the illness or injury (or incapacity for the purposes of Income Protection Cover).
Plan: The VitalityLife Plan, VitalityLife Essentials Plan or Mortgage Plus Plan.
Planholder: The owner of the plan.
Plan account: An amount that determines how much we can pay out if you make a claim under Life Cover or Serious Illness Cover. There are special rules for simultaneous claims under Serious Illness Cover.
Plan anniversary: The anniversary of the start date of the plan.
Plan premium: This is the total premium payable in respect of the covers in your plan. This does not include any fee which you may be charged for Vitality Plus or Vitality Optimiser.
Plan schedule: A document that shows:
Pre-existing medical condition: A medical condition (whether or not a diagnosis was made or any symptoms were evident) which existed before any of these dates, as appropriate:
Protected Cover: Lets you top your plan back up to its original level immediately after a claim. Two options available:
Protected Life Cover - Top up Life Cover only
Protected Life and Serious Illness Cover - Top up both Life Cover and Serious Illness Cover
Prudential: The Prudential Assurance Company Limited
Resident of the United Kingdom: A person who legally lives in the United Kingdom for at least 40 weeks in any 52 week period.
Retail Prices Index: The measure of UK inflation known as the Retail Prices Index (all items), as published by the Office for National Statistics. If the UK Government replaces that index with another index of UK retail price increases, we shall use that replacement index.
Serious Illness Cover: Serious Illness Cover pays a lump sum if you are diagnosed with an illness or condition that we cover and that meets our definition of that condition.
Single life plan: A plan that provides cover for one person only, referred to in this plan as the person covered. This does not include any cover provided for children.
Start date: The date when cover under the whole plan begins or, where relevant, when a particular cover begins.
Survival period: The period after an insured event that the insured person has to survive before a claim becomes valid.
Terminal illness: A definite diagnosis by the attending Consultant of an illness that satisfies both of the following:
Underwrite/Underwriting: The process we use to assess your application to include or change a cover. Underwriting may lead us to:
Vitality Optimiser: Vitality Optimiser can be added to your VitalityLife plan for an additional premium each month. This gives you access to our exclusive reward partners, like discounted gym memberships and weekly cinema tickets. It also gives you an upfront discount on your protection premium (from 5-47%) and allows you to manage your premium in future years by looking after your health.
Vitality Plus: Vitality Plus is an upgrade option you can add to your VitalityLife plan which gives you access to annual cashback and additional rewards, like cinema tickets and monthly gym discount. Vitality Plus has an additional monthly fee.
Vitality status: A measure of your achievement toward getting healthy. There are four status levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Your Vitality status depends on the recorded efforts that you make toward getting healthy between each plan anniversary.
Waiver of Premium on Death: This cover is only available if you have a joint life plan. Waiver of Premium on Death means that if one person covered dies or is diagnosed with a terminal illness, we stop charging plan premiums for the other person covered by your plan.
Waiver of Premium on Incapacity: Waiver of Premium on Incapacity means that if you become incapacitated, we stop charging the plan premium for your plan.
Waiver of Premium on Serious Illness: Waiver of Premium on Serious illness means that if you get a serious illness that we class as severity A, we stop charging the plan premium for your plan.
Whole of life: The term of a cover that lasts from the covers start date to the death of the insured person for joint life first death or the death of both persons covered for joint life second death.
© Vitality Corporate Services Limited trading as VitalityHealth and VitalityLife. All rights reserved.