Critically insured (Critical Illness Insurance in general)

Member Name: sympatic

Product:	Critical Illness Insurance in general
Date:	14/03/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good protection

Disadvantages: Need to read the small print

I had never even heard of Critical Illness until a few months ago when we went to arrange a remortgage and the advisor started to ask questions about how we would cope if either myself or my boyfriend sufferred a major illness like a heart attack or cancer which was not fatal but impacted on our lives. We have always had life cover on the mortage incase either os us dies so the other is not left with a debt but had not considered anything like this happening after all things like a stroke can leave you paralysed and in both our cases any major illness would leave us out of work and having to swap careers.

The idea of the policy is that you select a level of cover and a time period over which you want to be covered, we opted for the term of our mortgage and then increased the cover until we are both 55, we took out seperate policies so that both are covered individually. You then pay a monthly payment to an insurance company by direct debit, the cost will dpened on cover, term, age and all your other personal information and medical history, it was not as expensive as I expected however we are both healthy and active which helps.

The policy covers you for a wide range of things like cancer, stroke heart attack and loss of limbs however it is important to read the actual conditions of cover as for something like cancer it has to be in two major organs for a payout. The idea is that once diagnosed if you survive 28 days rom the event happening, e.g heart attack, then the lump sum will be paid out tax free, naturally if you die then your next of kin would claim on the life cover, it is possible to have combined critical illness and life cover and the cost would probably work out cheaper than seperate policies however with seperate ones we felt that if the worst happened and we had a critical illness and lived we would get a pay out however if two years down the line we passed away then next of kin would also be protected. With a joint cover policy it will only pay out once.

Certainly I thought it more relevant than a life policy given my age and it does give a bit of peace of mind.

Summary: Protect yourself