Critical Illness Cover - Everything You Need to Know
If you are critically ill, the last thing, you will want to think about your financial obligations like making monthly loan repayment or covering your mortgage for the fear of losing your home. A critical illness cover can provide you peace of mind in these difficult circumstances. Critical illness cover can either be used as a standalone product or combined with a life insurance policy. When combined with term assurance the policy is often accelerated, which means the policy will pay out either on diagnosis of a critical illness or death but not both, these policies will pay out once only and then terminate - there is no surviving life cover benefit should the policy pay out on diagnosis of one of the listed illnesses.
Similar to a life insurance plan a Critical Illness Cover has a number of different options, which will affect the price of your premiums. Like any insurance policy, personal factors also affect your rates such as your age, whether you are a smoker and any existing conditions, you may have. The terms of the cover can vary considerable from insurer to insurer so it is very important to read the small print.
Where life insurance is very black and white in its cover, it will only pay out on death; the price of a critical illness plan can depend very much on the number of illnesses covered. Depending on the plan you could expect anywhere from 20 up to 38 or so different critical illnesses covered by the plan. Obviously, some illnesses have a much higher likelihood of occurring the range of illnesses should always be considered when choosing a plan.
Searching online for Critical Illness Insurance
When buying a policy you must choose the length and level of cover, often individuals will want to plan to cover their mortgage, so they align the level of cover with the outstanding mortgage and the length with the term of the mortgage. Although a critical illness cover can be used to cover a specific debt, you can use the cash lump sum, however you wish.
Total permanent disability is an additional option to choose on a plan and one that are not always fully understood. It specifies that the policy will pay out if you are totally and permanently unable to work in your own occupation due to illness or accident. This could prove very important should you become permanently disabled and the cause not necessarily being one of the covered critical illnesses.
As with life cover you also have the choice of reviewable or guaranteed premiums and whether you want to a waiver, the premium should you suffer an illness or injury. Like with any insurance policy all the information you should need to make an informed decision can be found in the Key fact's document and policy terms; it is important to understand the differences in the level of cover when comparing policy prices, to help you make comparisons. The key feature's summary should list the Critical illness cover in alphabetical order.
