Royal London says its average protection underwriting turnaround has fallen to 1.5 working days, with all underwriting work assessed within four working days.
The insurer has increased the size of its underwriting team by 20% since the beginning of 2025.
Its specialist large-case underwriting team has doubled from six to 12 over the same period.
Royal London is also using iGPR’s Magic Service, a tool to outsource and speed up the process of gathering medical evidence from GPs.
It says the average turnaround for receiving medical evidence through the service is now five days, compared with several weeks previously.
The insurer has also introduced future start dates for applications submitted online through Protection Platform and extended the period in which customers can start a plan after acceptance terms are issued without requiring a Declaration of Health.
The changes come as research from the Protection Distributors Group found 59% of advisers believe inefficient underwriting processes are a barrier to writing more protection business.
Royal London chief underwriter Craig Paterson says: “Advisers need a service they can rely on, with cases handled quickly and consistently and clear support to help customers access the protection they need.
“As our protection business has grown, we’ve continued investing in the people, technology and underwriting capabilities needed to support that growth.
“We’re now seeing the impact of that investment, with average underwriting turnaround at 1.5 working days.
“We’ve grown our underwriting team by 20% since the beginning of 2025, while investment in technology, medical evidence and our digital journeys is helping us make practical improvements across the application process.”
Howdengrange Financial Services mortgage adviser Dave Fair adds: “In recent times the improved speed of service from Royal London has been a great help to my business, ensuring quicker replies and outcomes for clients to enable applications to progress quicker.
“The implementation of iGPR as well has helped speed up the process for those applications that require this.”
