National Friendly has entered the term assurance market with its Friendly Life Cover proposition, making National Friendly term assurance available on both single and joint life bases through the Iress Exchange sourcing platform. The Bristol-based mutual is positioning the product as a straightforward, adviser-led solution in a segment where, according to chief executive Graham Singleton, a number of high-profile providers have recently withdrawn.
What Friendly Life Cover offers policyholders
The product pays a fixed lump sum on death, with the choice of a level or decreasing benefit structure. Terminal illness benefit is included as standard, accelerating to the full sum assured on diagnosis, a feature that matters to any policyholder planning around a serious diagnosis rather than death alone.
Applicants aged 18 to 77 are accepted, with cover extendable to age 90 and policy terms running from five to 50 years. Premiums start at a minimum of £4 per month and are guaranteed at outset, meaning the cost of cover is fixed for the life of the policy. For clients in drawdown or on a fixed retirement income, that predictability is not a minor detail; it removes one variable from a budget that may already be under pressure from inflation and sequence-of-returns risk.
Alongside the core death benefit, policyholders have access to fracture cover, online GP and dental services, and waiver of premium, a feature worth examining closely, since it protects the policy if the policyholder becomes unable to work. These supplementary benefits add breadth without complicating the core proposition.
National Friendly term assurance and the adviser market
Singleton framed the launch explicitly around competition: ‘We believe advisers and clients benefit from strong competition, broad choice and providers that remain committed to delivering high-quality protection solutions.’ That is a reasonable observation in a market where consolidation and provider exits have reduced the number of available options for advisers building client protection portfolios.
The mutual describes responsive underwriting as a priority, and has partnered with Company Medical Advisers Ltd to broaden access to specialist clinical expertise for complex underwriting and claims assessments. For advisers placing cases involving clients with medical history, the quality of underwriting support can be as consequential as the headline premium.
Distribution runs through Iress’s Exchange platform. Jacqueline Durbin, global head of product for life, pensions and mortgages at Iress, said the integration would give advisers ‘seamless, exclusive access to even more choice for their clients.’
From a portfolio-planning perspective, term assurance sits firmly in the capital-preservation and income-replacement corner of a household’s financial plan. Over a five-to-twenty-year horizon, the case for adequate life cover does not change with market conditions. What does change is the cost and availability of that cover: a mutual with guaranteed premiums and cover extendable to age 90 warrants consideration precisely because those terms are fixed at the point of application, not subject to future repricing. As with any protection product, advisers should weigh the benefit schedule against the client’s specific liability and income-replacement need before recommending it.
