Engage Mutual Assurance Savings & Life Insurance

Any rugby league fan will know the name engage because the company sponsors the sport's Super League competition and will do so until at least the end of the 2010 season. For the rest of you, it's probably not too familiar.

Only launched in 2005, engage Mutual Assurance is actually an offshoot of Homeowners Friendly Society, which has been providing financial services for over 28 years. This means that engage shares the society's aims of protecting, preserving and enhancing people's welfare. It also has the advantage of being a mutual organisation, so that all profits are used for the benefit of members, which means anyone who takes out a plan of any kind.

engage Mutual isn't the normal type of insurer. Due to its background, its products are slanted more towards providing savings and investments. These products include a lump sum investment plus an adult tax exempt savings plan. The latter takes advantage of the organisation's friendly society status so that you can save up to £25 per month with no tax on interest. The downside is that the plans run for 10-25 years so you can say goodbye to the money for some time.

Child Trust Fund plans are also a big feature, with engage even putting out a separate website (www.childtrustfund.com) that promotes the funds in general and its own product in particular.

One the insurance side of things, there are two main offerings - life insurance and health cash plans. Life insurance is aimed mainly, but not exclusively, at the over 50s. Anyone in the 50-80 age range is guaranteed acceptance with no need for a medical and there is a choice of plans. For some odd reason, providers of these sorts of plan always seem obliged to offer a gift as an incentive to sign up, although in this case you can have cashback as an alternative.

Given the age range of likely plan members, the option of putting proceeds towards funeral expenses is emphasised. There is a tie-up with Co-operative Funeralcare, which can make all the arrangements. You're also given the choice of placing a legal charge on a policy to ensure the proceeds are used for this purpose. Indeed, since the average cost of a funeral was apparently £3,222 at the end of 2007, this is recommended. As encouragement to do this, Co-operative Funeralcare offers to put £250 towards the cost.

Death within two years of starting the plan means the full amount of cover won't be paid. Instead, 150% of premiums made, or 300% in the case of accidental death, will be paid into the estate. This may sound harsh, but it is common practice across most life insuring products. There is also an arrangement with Grace Consulting, who will provide independent care advice.

The other insurance offering is a health cash plan, which was launched in 2008 following the transfer of 30,000 Premier Health Benefits customers from Wakefield and District Hospital's Contributory Scheme. This plan has Gold and Platinum options and provides cash in the case of particular events occurring. The money is paid to cover dental and optical costs, for various treatments and hospital stays. Again, you don't need to take a medical and there is generally some intro gift like shopping vouchers if you sign up.

You can apply quickly online at www.engagemutual.com (www.engagemutual.co.uk uses a redirect so check your browser settings). †

16/10/2008 It takes several clicks to get to the travel insurance quotation form for Engage Mutual, but once you get there, the form is standard. The price they quoted me was among the cheapest I've had and included personal property and money cover. However, aside from those things, it didn't make it obvious what else the policy covered. Still, it was a good quote and I'd consider using them. They also automatically gave me a quote for an annual multi trip policy and again this was reasonably priced and worth consideration.

02/06/2008 Engage offer travel insurance for any age unlike most who stop at around my dad's 70 years - and the quote was surprisingly cheap considering. It was really straightforward to see what was included in the cover right from the very word go. Another unique feature seemed to be the excess reduction waiver which only cost 6 extra for the two of us. The only one negative point of the whole thing was that the system seemed to reset itself a couple of times while getting the quote.