Do I Need Critical Illness Insurance ?
Critical Illness Insurance can be taken to protect you from a number of different scenarios. The premise behind the plan is that it will pay you a lump sum should you be diagnosed with one of the critical illnesses defined in the plan you take. The lump sum you receive should you be unfortunate enough to suffer from one of the illnesses will be paid to you direct and can be used for what ever it needs to be. A lot of people will pay off any debts or liabilities they may have. You can also if required use the funds to adapt for changes in lifestyle that may occur due to the critical illness.
These could be things such as making changes to the home, vehicle or getting any specialist equipment that could be required. You can also pay off your mortgage, loans or credit cards as this would take off any financial pressure you could have. If you have these pressures these can put extra strain on you at a time when you possibly will already be struggling. If you have no financial worries this can enable you to concentrate further on making a recovery from the illness you are suffering from.
The better of the critical illness insurance plans will cover you for up to 40 different illnesses. However the main claims on them will come from heart attack, cancer and strokes. You often find that it is males who suffer from heart attacks, females from cancer and males again from strokes. If you break it down further you often find that the cancer claims come from breast cancer in females and testicular cancer in males.
You can decide to take your plan in a number of different ways. You could decide to take it with reviewable or guaranteed premiums. If you have a plan with reviewable premiums this means that the premium could be reviewed every 5 years. On the review the insurance company could decide to increase your premium, decrease your premium or keep it the same as it was previously. Once this review has occured the premium is then normally guaranteed for the next 5 years. The reviewable premium normally starts off cheaper than a guaranteed premium but then longer term this can end up being a more expensive plan. If you are running with a tight budget then this can help initally. A guaranteed premium can start off more expensive however it is guaranteed not to change throughout the policy term. With this type of premium you know what you are going to pay from the start of the plan even though this can be more expensive from the start.