The Intermediary – July 2025 - Flipbook - Page 56
Q&A
LifeSearch
The Intermediary speaks with Lisa Kelly,
claims manager at LifeSearch and winner
of the ‘Hero in the Middle’ category
at L&G’s Business Quality Awards
Can you provide some details on
the reason you received this award?
This was quite a long-standing case. When I spoke
to the claimant originally, he had been diagnosed
with a terminal illness, but a very unusual one.
He’d already had a form of leukaemia, and he
had been given the all-clear. So, he’d gone through
all his treatment and gotten through to the other
side. Then around Christmas time he got a viral
infection. He went in for some tests and was then
told that if he was given treatment, he could live
for five days, and if he wasn’t given treatment he
could live for three days.
He and his wife had five children, with three
under the age of three. The claimant was a stayat-home dad and looked after the three youngest
children, and his wife was a GP and did quite a lot
of exploratory work for the NHS.
He didn’t want to spend the days that he had
left sorting out his insurance. He wanted to set
everything up for the kids, write them birthday
cards and take his family out to dinner.
I agreed to start the claims process on their
behalf with L&G. I normally find it’s more efficient
if the client does it themselves so that they
can answer any specific questions, but in this
e, I thought it was a better option.
instance,
I had to do it in a roundabout way, because
ou start a terminal illness claim, then the
if you
insurer will have to contact the GP to check
that they fall within the stance of having
less than 12 months to live. However, if
it is a death claim, it’s simpler because
it’s just a confirmation of death. It
needed to be a death claim despite
the fact he hadn’tt died yet – to make
ess easier for the family.
the process
That’s what L&G did.
He lived for the five days. They’d
been to dinner,, had the time
together,, and then he admitted
himself into hospital.
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The Intermediary | July 2025
I advised his wife of The Ruth Strauss
Foundation, which is a charity that helps young
children prepare for the death of one of their
parents. There’s not a lot of claims like this, but
when I have supported families with similar cases,
then I tend to I utilise this charity.
I then started the claim process with the
claimant’s wife. We’d just been informed at that
time by our business development manager (BDM)
that they were doing a new online process for
claims at L&G, so we both downloaded it and went
through the process.
The policy was very young, and then it was
determined that the claimant had been to the
GP prior to taking out his policy, with certain
symptoms that could have been put down to the
start of his leukaemia.
So, it was a complex process with a lot of
detailed information to cover, which is what L&G
recognised when they awarded me at the Business
Quality Awards.
‘HERO IN THE
MIDDLE’
LISA KELLY
