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Life insurance provider Chesnara announced today that it has agreed to buy Swedish rival Moderna Life for £20.1 million.

Moderna Life is a Stockholm-based unit-linked life insurance company, which was set up in 2000 and has 63 employees.

Chesnara also said it is looking for further acquisitions in the financial services sector.

Chief executive of Chesnara Graham Kettleborough said: "In my opinion, this is a high quality business which is well positioned in the market, which we have bought at an attractive price."

The company was acquired by Chesnara at a discount of 63 per cent of its estimated value of £54 million.

Chesnara chief executive Graham Kettleborough told Reuters that he was eyeing two British closed life funds which could some come to market.

Moderna Life is currently owned by Moderna Finance AB, which in turn is owned by Icelandic Glitnir Bank and it recently sold its non-life insurance operations to TrygVesta.

Chesnara said it expects the acquisition to have a positive effect on the embedded value per share of the company.

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions.

AEGON Scottish Equitable reported a rise in income protection claims paid out for stress and depression-related illnesses last year.

Figures published today reveal that claims for such conditions were up 12 per cent on the previous year, which the insurer said could be due to the worry over the economic downturn.

Overall, the company paid out 93 per cent of income protection claims and 91 per cent of critical illness claims in 2008. The seven per cent of claims not paid out were due to non-disclosure.

Helen Morris, claims manager at AEGON Scottish Equitable, said: "We continue to encourage advisers to use all the tools available to them in order to encourage full disclosure at the application stage and to this end we have launched a new understanding claims website."

Earlier this week, influential think-tank the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted the economy would not recover until 2012.


The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with depression.

High levels of germs commonly found in the mouth could be linked to an increased risk of heart attack, a new study suggests.

Scientists studied levels of bacteria in the mouths of people who had suffered a heart attack and compared them with healthy individuals.

It was discovered that two particular species of pathogen had a significant association with an increased risk of heart attack.

The research, conducted at the University of Buffalo, is the latest in a number of studies to connect organisms that cause gum disease with the development of heart disease.

Researcher Dr Oelisoa Andriankaja, who conducted the study, said: "The message here is that even though some specific periodontal pathogens have been found to be associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, the total bacterial pathogenic burden is more important than the type of bacteria."

This may be important news for people seeking heart conditions life insurance, as it suggests that improving oral health could reduce your risk of a heart attack.

A previous study, outlined in the Journal of Perindontology, showed that 91 per cent of patients who suffered a heart attack had periodontitis (gum disease), compared with 61 per cent of healthy individuals.

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with heart conditions.

Many young people in the UK fail to take out suitable life insurance, recent research has shown.

Data from LifeSearch found that only three per cent of new customers in 2008 were under the age of 25, which is in contrast to an overall increase in life insurance sales of 13 per cent over the last year.

Matt Morris, policy advisor at LifeSearch, commented: "Many younger people have debts, mortgages and families that need financial protection in the event of the main income provider being unable to work."

He noted that more effort needs to be made to encourage Britain’s youth to take out life insurance policies and other cover to ensure they get the support they need if they become ill.

Recent research published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggested that cases of diabetes in the UK have increased by 74 per cent between 1997 and 2003.

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions

New figures from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) have revealed that the increase in the number of new MRSA bloodstream infections has slowed.

According to the HPA, there were 1,087 cases of the infection reported in England during the final quarter of last year, compared with 1,080 during the previous quarter.

Commenting on the figures, Dr Georgia Duckworth, head of the HPA’s healthcare-associated infection and antimicrobial resistance department, said that the last year has seen infections "steadily falling".

"We would obviously like to have seen the trend continued in this quarter and hope that ongoing surveillance will show that this plateau is not indicative of a levelling trend, but we need to see next quarter’s figures," she stated.

Conservative shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley claimed that the government’s efforts to address such infections in hospital are "misguided", the BBC reports.

The politician claimed that the "deep clean" undertaken by the NHS "wasn’t backed up by evidence".

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions.

A new study has revealed the existence of cancer stem cells which are the root cause of childhood leukaemia, making improved treatments possible.

Leukaemia Research and the Medical Research Council have funded the research on identical twins which has shown that both possess the same "genetically abnormal" cells, even though only one is actually being treated for leukaemia.

The research, published in the Journal Science, found that such cells can lay dormant in the bone marrow, supporting evidence that childhood cancer begins in the womb.

Professor Tariq Enver, who led the research, feels that the discovery will lead to less aggressive treatments of the disease and consequently reduce side-effects.

Professor Mel Greaves, of the Institute of Cancer Research, stated that as well as lying dormant these cells can resist conventional chemotherapy and be the cause of relapse.

He concluded that "these are the cells that dictate disease course and provide the bull’s eye to target with new therapies".

Elsewhere, the Institute of Cancer Research recently reported that cancer charities Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Cancer Research UK had "joined forces" to launch a clinical trial for women with aggressive breast cancer.


The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions.

Scientists have discovered that military radar technology may be an effective tool in detecting and monitoring heart attacks and strokes.

The research has been conducted at the University of Leicester and aims to prove that such technology can be adapted to detect dangerous blockages in blood, potentially reducing heart attack which is the third most common cause of death in the UK.

Joanna Cowe, a military systems engineer working at the university’s medical physics group explained how ultrasound can be used to target emboli, the blockages that are responsible for one quarter of all strokes.

She noted: "Research into the detection of emboli and vascular disease, using ultrasound, has the potential to reduce stroke death and disability rates, and to generate large financial savings."

In related news, a study by the British Medical Journal has found that being resistant to aspirin makes patients four times more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke.


The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions.

The follow-up check procedures for women who have been treated for breast cancer must improve, according to two medical experts.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they claim that these procedures have not been adapted as survival rates from the disease have improved.

Guidelines for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) state that the role of follow-ups is to detect recurrence and deal with any adverse affects and claim that three years is a sufficient time span for follow-up treatment.

However, Dr Michael Dixon, clinical director at Edinburgh’s Breakthrough research unit and Dr David Montgomery, clinical research fellow at Glasgow Royal Infirmary say that, due to the increased effectiveness of treatment for initial cancer, new cancers are now more common.

They commented: "If Nice is to achieve its aim of detecting and treating local recurrence it clearly cannot be achieved with a three year follow-up."

They go on to say that women should be given an annual examination for two years with surveillance by mammography to follow.

Elsewhere, scientists may have made a major breakthrough in the treatment of cancer with a way to halt resistance to the cancer drug tamoxifen, the BBC reports.

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions.

A new study by Australian researchers has shown that a group of women taking calcium supplements were more prone to heart attacks.

Calcium supplements are occasionally prescribed to post-menopausal women to ensure bone strength but may be having an adverse affect, the study suggests.

Vascular events including heart attack, stroke and sudden death were commonly reported in a group of 1,471 post-menopausal women, some of whom were given a daily calcium supplement.

Carried out over five years, the study revealed that the group taking calcium supplements were much more prone to cardiac incidents.

The researchers, writing in the British Medical Journal, noted: "The present data do not permit definitive conclusions to be reached in this regard but do flag cardiac health as an area of concern in relation to calcium use and mandate that this is assessed carefully in future studies of calcium supplementation."

In related news, the British Heart Foundation recently said that long-standing anxiety can significantly increase the risk of heart attack in men over 60.


The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions

The man who came up with the idea for critical illness cover has pointed out that it gives people a viable alternative to life insurance.

South African surgeon Dr Marius Barnard, who created the first ever critical illness policy in 1983, pointed out that increased life expectancy, improved ability to diagnose illness early and the advent of better treatment have meant that critical illness cover accounts for more eventualities than life insurance.

He noted the difficulties facing individuals who want to take out adequate cover: "If you die at 30, life insurance was more important.

"But if you get a critical illness at 55 or 45 - when you are at the height of your earning ability - and you have an operation and survive another ten to 20 years, then critical illness insurance was more important."

He added that while life insurance is somewhat easier for individuals to understand, critical illness policies often require a financial advisor to explain their finer details.

"When the financial advisor sits down with the client about life insurance, he understands it. But with critical illness cover, this takes time," remarked Dr Barnard.

In its 2006 Statement of Best Practice for critical illness cover, the Association of British Insurers called for "plain English" to be used in product information.

The Insurance Helpline specialises in obtaining cover for people living with medical conditions