There Are Some Illnesses More Critical Than Others
Summary
The important facts you should think about when choosing critical illness cover and the rangeof companies offering thisstyle of policy.
Your mortgage lender may give you several financial products together with critical illness cover. But, as they are not experts in this field, you will almost certainly find a better offer elsewhere.
The level of cover on offer is just as vital as the premium when looking forcritical illness cover. The policies from Alliance and Leicester and Nationwide are extremely restricted says an adviser at Money Supermarket, an online and telephone life assurance broker. Standard Life covers only eight critical illnesses, with Scottish Equitable covering just 9, whereas the market leader, Swiss Life, covers 38.
Blindness, deafness, loss of speech, diabetes, Parkinsons and Aids are some of the conditions not covered by some of the big insurers. The advisersays that it is not worth thinking abouta policy, which insures less than 25 ailments.
An umbrella term included in all policies is ‘total and permanent disabilities’, this term means you are covered for any ailment, which stops you from working permanently.
You neeed to be aware of the lanuage as some policies cover ‘any occupation’ while others only cover your ‘own’ occupation. You will not get a settlement under a ‘any occupation’ policy unless you are totallyunable to carryout a job, however unskilled. Therefore The Directorrecommends you sign up for a ‘own’ occupation policy.
There are many companies as well as Aviva who offer comprehensive insurance including Legal and General, Norwich Union, Standard Life, Scottish Equitable, Scottish Provident, Friends Provident, Liverpool Victoria, Skandia and Zurich Life.
For many years Life Insurance has been promoted by mortgage companies. This has resulted in critical illness cover never being considered by many people. There are four times as many claims on critical illness insurance compared to life policies, when the consumer has taken out both types of policies.
Life insurance cover is tremendously important, particulary if you have dependents, as they will welcome the lump sum payment on your death. However critical illness cover ought to be the priority if you have debts to settle, particularly a mortgage. The senior adviserconsiders critical illness to be vital as it covers the cost of your household bills, even if you are ill and unable to work.
The monthly payments will be larger if you are a smoker and will also rise if you are older. A decreasing term policy, which is targeted at people only wanting to insure the cost of their mortgage, is the cheapest.
One of Spencer Knight’s customers, a 28 year old non-smoker, who required£100,000 cover from a critical illness, long term policy, was quoted 14 pounds 40 pence per month, which rose to £24-30 for smokers. However a Directorfrom Tesco Finance suggested a policy, which gave both life protection and critical illness cover for 17 pounds 80 pence a month, so it could be worth paying a bit higher premium.
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