What is a free limit?

A major advantage of a group arrangement is that members below the free limit don’t normally have to be medically underwritten. The maximum free limit is different for all our Group Protection products. To find out what the maximum free limit is for our other products, you should visit the ‘What is a free limit’ section for Group Life Assurance and Dependants’ Pension and Group Critical Illness Cover.

Free Limit

What does this mean?	We can provide cover up to a certain amount without the member having to provide medical evidence about their health and pastimes
How it works	We’ll set the free limit when we quote for a scheme. The free limit will depend on the number of eligible members joining and the level of benefit entitlement. It will also depend on whether the eligibility conditions include membership to a pension scheme, where membership is voluntary. If we don’t know this when we produce our quote, we’ll assume that at least 75% of eligible employees will have joined the pension scheme at the policy start date. We’ll reduce the free limit we quoted if this is not the case. We’ll usually set it as an amount of scheme earnings to make it easier to identify members who will need to provide medical evidence because their benefit level is more than the free limit.
Maximum free limit	£120,000 scheme earnings. We’ll tell you what the free limit is when we send you a quote
	The free limit is based on number of members in a scheme
	The free limit is based on the number of members in the scheme and is worked out as follows:
Number Of Members (N)	Free Limit Formula (benefit)
Under 10	Nil
10 - 40	£3000 x N or 10% aggregate scheme earnings if lower
40 +	£120,000 or 10% aggregate scheme earnings if lower
	Free limit based on scheme size
	This table below shows the maximum free limit as annual benefits that are available for each scheme insured with us:
Number Of Members	Free Limit (benefit)
Under 10	Nil
10	£30,000
20	£60,000
30	£90,000
40	£120,000
	Or 10% of aggregate scheme earnings if lower.

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