September 30th, 2009 by admin

Summary

The issues you should mull over when deciding on critical illness cover and the varietyof companies proffering thissort of policy.

Your mortgage provider may give you quite a few financial products together with critical illness cover. But, as they are not specialists in this market, you will most likely find a superior deal elsewhere.

The amount 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 very limited says a senior adviser at Tesco Finance, a telephone and online life assurance broker. Standard Life covers only seven critical illnesses, with Norwich Union covering just 9, whereas the market leader, Aviva, covers 38.

Parkinsons, Aids, loss of speech, deafness, blindness and diabetes are some of the conditions not covered by some of the Insurance companies. The Directorsays that it does not warrant thinking abouta policy, which covers less than 25 conditions.

An umbrella term incorporated in all policies is ‘total and permanent disabilities’, this term means you are insured for any illness, which prevents you from working permanently.

You need to be alert to the lanuage as some plans cover ‘any occupation’ whereas other policies only insure your ‘own’ occupation. You will not get a payout under a ‘any occupation’ policy unless you are completelyunable to carryout a job, however unskilled. Consequently The senior adviserrecommends you sign up for a ‘own’ occupation policy.

There are a range of companies as well as Swiss Life who offer comprehensive cover 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 sold by mortgage lenders. Therefore many people never considered critical illness insurance. 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 settlement on your death. However critical illness insurance should be the priority if you have debts to settle, above all a mortgage. The adviserconsiders critical illness to be more important as it covers the cost of your household bills, even if you are sick and unable to work.

The monthly payments will be higher if you are a smoker and will also rise if you are older. A decreasing term policy, which is intended for people only wanting to insure the cost of their home owner loan, 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 £14-40 per month, which rose to £24-30 for smokers. However an adviserfrom LifeSearch suggested a policy, which gave both life insurance and critical illness cover for £16-60 a month, so paying a higher premium could be worth it.