Guardian’s new low-cost life cover – Life Essentials – goes live today following its launch earlier this month.

The life cover is now available on Guardian’s quote and apply platform, Protection Builder, and major portals.

The protection challenger said Life Essentials is designed to appeal to price-sensitive clients and advisers whose priority for life cover is affordability. 

It sits alongside Guardian’s existing premier Life Protection which appeals to clients and advisers whose priority is quality and who value the enhanced terminal illness definition, 4-week premium waiver and other high-quality features embedded within the premier product.

Guardian sales director Hilary Banks said: “The introduction of greater choice from Guardian has been well received by the market, which is in line with what advisers were telling us about their clients needing to prioritise costs.

“We’ve also been encouraged by the comments about the role of advice in explaining quality differences, as this choice is ultimately about providing fair value to different customer segments and continuing to drive good outcomes and build trust in our industry. Going forward, we’re very excited to begin working with our advice partners to maximise this important distribution opportunity and get more people the protection they need.”

Meanwhile, Guardian has made some other changes to its Protection Menu.

The first change is to all Decreasing Covers, where Guardian is increasing the interest rate from 5% to 8%.

This more closely aligns to mortgage interest rate levels and the rates at which clients will typically be seeing their outstanding mortgage decrease. Alongside, it is removing the Mortgage Guarantee.

In addition, in line with the ABI’s latest review of critical illness minimum standards, Guardian has improved two of its critical illness definitions: Dementia and Low-Grade Prostate cancer.