Critical Illness Protection FAQ

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What is Critical Illness cover?
An insurance cover that provides a sum of money if the insured person were to have "a diagnosis of a listed critical illness. The list of illnesses must include cancer, heart attack and stroke" (Association of British Insurers (ABI) definition).

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How many illnesses are covered?
The ABI has a list of 23, including such as:

• Blindness
• Deafness
• Coma
• Heart valve replacement
• Coronary artery by-pass grafts
• HIV infection
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Paralysis
• Kidney failure
• Parkinson's Disease
• Motor Neurone Disease
• Major organ transplant
• Third degree burns

Some insurers include some or all of these illnesses and work to the ABI definitions, some defining and covering further critical illnesses within their policies i.e. Cardiomyopathy, Bacterial Meningitis, Open heart surgery.

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Can I make a claim straight after the diagnosis of a Critical Illness
Most providers have one of 14, 21, or 28 day periods where you cannot claim, but need claims to be registered within 6 months of the diagnosis. The above periods tend to reflect the fact that a lot of Critical Illness policies included Life insurance too, thus the period before the Critical Illness claim allows proper diagnosis and death in that period would prompt a claim on the life insurance element of the policy instead.

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How long does it provide cover for?
The term is chosen at outset and may depend upon what the cover is for. For Mortgage protection, it is usually linked to run for the specific Mortgage term, and for personal protection it may be set to finish i.e. at retirement.

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Critical Illness insurance add-ons?

• Waiver of premium – protect the policy by paying the premiums if the insured is long-term sick, usually longer than 6 months.
• Terminal Illness cover – if the insured person has 12-18 months or less to live, this allows the policy to pay out before death.
• Increasing cover – to combat the effects of rises in the cost of living (Inflation). The premium will increase along with the cover, usually on each policy anniversary.
• Buy-back option – the facility to re-instate/continue the life insurance portion of a policy after making a critical illness claim.

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What amount of Critical Illness insurance do I need?
It will depend on your personal financial circumstances. Most commonly, the initial figure people tend to cover is the same as their Mortgage debt, building in extra cover where possible. Talking to a Whole-of-market Financial Adviser may help you ascertain the appropriate amount of critical illness cover you need.

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How much should I expect to pay?
It depends on a number of factors, such as Gender, Age, whether or not you smoke, height & weight, occupation, and personal medical history/conditions. Family medical history plays a larger part in the cost of critical illness cover as, say a family history of heart disease was evident, the insurer may well perceive this as a higher risk and make a price decision accordingly. If the insurer returns a decision that asks for a higher premium than their standard premium for that cover, this is known as a 'rating' i.e. the applicant has been rated.

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Where can I get a personalised Critical Illness quote?
There are a number of places. The two seemingly most popular ways are to make contact with an Adviser or embrace the usefulness of the internet to obtain a quote. Lse.co.uk has linked to a Whole-of-market Adviser for the benefit of its members and visitors - click here to get a quote!.