Critical / Serious Illness Insurance
Parkview Mortgages are highly experienced professional advisers for mortgages, family protection, and home and contents insurance.
What is Critical / Serious Illness Insurance?
Critical / Serious Illness cover is a type of insurance policy that offers protection in the event of a critical / serious illness. The kinds of illnesses that are covered are usually long-term and very serious conditions such as a heart attack or stroke, loss of arms or legs, or diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease.
If you are diagnosed with any of the conditions listed in your policy, the insurance provider will pay you the lump sum you selected when you took it out (unless you have since changed this amount). In most cases, it’ll be a one-off payment for you to use how you wish: to cover your mortgage or rent, to meet living expenses, or even to pay for that round-the-world trip you’d always wanted to take.
What are the key features of Critical / Serious Insurance?
You can either buy standalone cover on its own or with life insurance. When you buy it with life insurance, both bits of your cover pay out if you die. If you get a critical illness, your critical illness cover pays out and your life insurance continues.
You can take out critical / serious cover integrated with life insurance – usually it’s decreasing term cover, however you can have level term protection too. With an integrated policy, you get a payout if you die or if you get a critical illness. There’s only one payout, so it tends to be a more affordable option.
With decreasing term Critical / Serious Illness, your payout decreases over time as the size of your mortgage, or other debts, decreases too. For that reason, decreasing-term Critical / Serious Illness tends to be cheaper than level or increasing term Critical / Serious Illness cover.
With level cover, you choose the cover amount and how long you want the cover to run for. The amount of cover and the amount you pay each month stays the same until your policy ends.
Another option for a critical illness policy would be an increasing policy or an indexed policy. This would be used if the sum assured would be used to provide an income or to provide for a family. The sum assured can be set to increase at a fixed rate annually. A popular practice is to increase the sum assure each year with the Retail Price Indexe RPI. An increasing the sum assured each year offers a bigger sum assured without additional underwriting. Increasing the sum assured or indexation helps the sum assured from becoming eroded and helps keep the sum assured keep pace with inflation.
Guaranteed rates – the premium is guaranteed throughout the term of the policy. Reviewable rates – the premium is reviewed after regular periods, normally 5 years, and may change according to a general change in rates in the light of claims experience.
Waiver of Premium is used to continue the policy in the event of the client becoming disabled or ill, and unable to work for longer than (usually) 26 weeks. In this event the insurance company will pay the premiums until the client is able to return to work. Whether this option would be beneficial or not would depend on what your sick pay arrangements are through your employer.
Cover for CHILDRENS Critical Illness Protection
It’s hard enough knowing what life would be like for you with a critical illness, so it is extremely difficult to imagine your child falling seriously ill.
Did you know that for an additional cost you can add your children to your life insurance and critical illness policy?
It means if your child is diagnosed with any of the conditions listed in your policy, you can claim the lump sum you selected when you took out children’s critical illness.
Its important to make sure you have a Critical / Serious Illness Insurance policy which fits your individual needs. We work with insurers from across the market to find the most suitable insurance policies to match your insurance needs.
Contact Parkview Mortgages today for a fee free no obligation insurance review.