It’s a way of providing a tax free lump sum if
you become seriously ill.
Critical Illness Insurance provides a tax-free lump sum
if you are diagnosed with a critical illness which is included on the
schedule of critical illnesses issued by your insurance company. Under
the policy’s “total and permanent disability conditions”,
you can also claim if you have an illness or an accident which means that
you cannot work again.
You can spend the money anyway you want.
The one point you should be aware of is that with critical
illness insurance you need to survive a minimum number of days following
diagnosis in order to claim. This is known as the survival period. With
most insurance companies the survival period is 28 days but some have
reduced this to 14 days.
Critical Illness Insurance provides much more extensive
cover than just Terminal Illness Insurance, as Critical
Illness cover is not related to your life expectancy. Indeed, all the
Critical Illness policies we sell include Terminal Illness cover at no
extra cost.
All the critical illness policies we sell also include cover
for “total and permanent disability”. This means that if you
suffer from any condition or have an accident that totally and permanently
prevents you from working, then you have a claim.
However, before an insurance company pays a “total
and permanent disability” claim they will need to know that you
are too ill to ever work again. But it is up to you to decide how you
want them to define being “out of work”. That is why, before
we can quote you, you need to decide what type of employment cover you
require. On our web site you have three options:
Conditions that prevent you from following: -
Your own existing occupation. This is the most expensive
option
Any employment to which you are suited. This is the medium-priced
option
You’re not fit to do any work of any kind.
This is the cheapest option
You will have to decide which of these three employment
options you want.
You can add Critical Illness cover to a Life Insurance policy,
making it a combined policy, and this generally saves significant sums
compared with having two separate policies. In fact, sometimes you can
buy a combined life and critical illness policy cheaper than just a critical
illness policy by itself. If it’s really only critical illness insurance
you want still try getting a quote combined with life insurance –
you may get both together and save money!