Life critical illness insurance is a very popular form of protection insurance, it is designed to provide you with peace of mind should you be unfortunate enough to suffer from one of the designated illnesses in your plan. The actual illnesses that are covered in your plan are detailed in the conditions of each individual company. It is very important to ensure that you have the correct plan to suit your needs, as all the critical illness quotes you can buy are different. The better plans will give you up to 40 different illnesses and the poorer ones 29. With there being such a big gulf in the illnesses covered within the plans it is important that you get the correct one. Critical illness is also often combined with life insurance, to offer the full protection package. Life and critical illness insurance is often little or no more expensive than critical illness on its own. It is also worth considering that by taking out critical illness on its own there is a survival period that you have to survive for to ensure you get the policy to pay out. This is often 14 days after you are diagnosed with the critical illness. However if you were to take critical illness life insurance combined you are ensured the payment as if you did not qualify for the critical illness payment the life insurance would payout.
You can decide to take your critical illness life insurance or critical illness only on a guaranteed or a reviewable basis. A reviewable premium will normally be reviewed every five years. The theory behind a reviewable premium is that it will start off cheaper if you want more cost effective protection but there is always the possibility it could get more expensive over time. The reviews that occur on the policy are not going to mean that the policy will automatically go up however it could go up down or simply remain the same. The insurance company doing the review cant come back to you and ask for further medical information or put the premium up as you have got older. The review is purely based on that particular companies claim history in that previous 5 year period. With critical illness insurance providers becoming more and more experienced in the industry the claims predictions are normally very good. On the flip side a guaranteed premium is one that will remain constant throughout the full term of the policy and is guaranteed not to change. As mentioned previously these can be more expensive from the outset.
People take critical illness insurance out for many different reasons, after all its main aim is to provide that little bit of peace of mind should the worse happen. Many people take critical illness to run along side their mortgage and a specifically designed mortgage critical illness is perfect for this. Also known as decreasing critical illness, mortgage critical illness will reduce its sum assured over a period of time alongside a decreasing mortgage. This can be a very cost effective way of providing protection that will always pay your mortgage. The reason why it is cheaper is that the sum assured is coming down all the time so as time goes on the amount you would receive from the policy is reducing. The other type of critical illness quotes that are widely taken are level or term critical illness. The main difference between this and the mortgage version is that the sum assured remains constant throughout the policy. This can be an ideal way of covering an interest only mortgage when you are simply paying the outstanding interest on a mortgage or if you wish to provide an income for family should you suffer from a critical illness. As the sum assured is constant then the premiums for this type of plan are normally more expensive.
The better life critical illness plans will cover you for up to 40 different illnesses and the ones at the lower end will give you cover for about 29. The main claims that are made from the plans are cancer, heart attack and stroke. Cancer normally accounts for about 50% on average of all claims with breast cancer normally being the main cancer that is paid out on. Heart attack is normally the second highest claim with about 80% of these claims going to men. Thirdly is stroke with men getting about 70% of these claims. The majority of the policies also offer children’s cover, this is where the policy should pay if your natural or legally adopted child were to suffer from a critical illness and this is also high up on the claims that are paid out.
Critical illness insurance partly with the advent of the internet is much more widely available and also due to the population getting older people are taking critical illness insurance later in life. Over fifties critical illness is very popular as we need the insurance later into life and for longer periods of time in our lives. As the cost of property has risen so much recently the mortgages that we are taking on property is getting longer and longer. Mortgage critical illness cover that is also known as decreasing critical illness cover is getting more and more popular and is being taken over longer terms. As people are getting older they become more and more aware of the liabilities that they have and the older you get there is more chance of suffering from a critical illness so decreasing critical illness insurance that is also referred to as mortgage critical illness insurance becomes more important. In addition to all these points life insurance is also a consideration to those with liabilities. Life insurance as you get older can get very expensive so it is a good idea to combine the two insurances together from the outset. Critical illness and life insurance in some cases is not much more expensive that critical illness on its own and gives a bit more extra peace of mind. It is also worth considering that some critical illness polices have what is known as survival periods built into them. If you don’t survive the survival period the policy will not pay however if you have life cover built in this will ensure the payout from the policy occurs.
You can also add a number of extras onto your critical illness life insurance policy, waiver of premium are a popular option; this is when you can pay a little extra from the outset of the policy and if you are off work with accident or sickness the policy premiums would be paid for you after a deferment period. This is normally about 26 weeks on the majority of contracts. You can also chose to add a renewal option onto the plan, this once again is normally added on at the start of the policy and is a cost option, the renewal option would mean that you can renew your plan every 5 years if you wanted to without having to provide any further information about the state of your health. You could also chose to add an indexation option onto your life critical illness plan this would mean that the plan would increase with the Retail Prices Index to make sure the plan would pay you out inline with inflation. One of the other popular issues is TPD total and permanent disability this would mean that the plan would pay our if you were to be totally and permanently disabled. Normally the test for this is if you can do your own occupation or not.
