L&G simplifies online trust process

The enhanced service will mean paper forms are no longer needed, helping intermediaries to store their customers’ information in one central hub. Additionally, signatures are no longer required, meaning there will be no delays in the process of completing the trust.

The simplified process for putting a policy in trust has had pre-population built in, meaning intermediaries now only need to provide a few extra details to complete the process.

As well as developments for intermediaries, the new online trusts will give allow customers the flexibility to decide whether to give all the proceeds away or keep some or all of the terminal or critical illness benefit for themselves at point of a valid claim.

Legal & General are launching five online trusts across their personal, business and relevant life plans, for the exclusive use of intermediaries.

Craig Brown, director of intermediary at Legal & General, commented: “We are constantly listening to our intermediary partners about how we can improve our services and are committed to finding innovative solutions to making working with us simpler and easier. We know that trusts have often been associated with complexity and time-consuming processes and have seen a fairly low adoption. We wanted to change this, as writing a policy in trust in many instances is the right thing to do, putting the right money in the right hands at the right time. So we felt that more needed to be done to simplify this journey for intermediaries and their customers alike and that is what we are launching today.

"We believe that these changes will make creating a trust much easier for our intermediary partners, saving them time, paper work and chase up calls giving them more time back to talk to more of their customers about the benefits of protection.”