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- Critical Illness Cover
- Critical Illness Cover: Best quote v best cover
Critical Illness Cover Comparison
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Critical Illness Cover – Best Cover vs. Best Quote?
Unlike life insurance which is fairly cut and dry when it comes to a claim, critical illness cover has much more detail in the policy wording that you may wish to take into account.Best quotes for Critical Illness Insurance
Searching just by premium can be a good place to start when it comes to choosing the best cover for you.
Premiums for a non smoking male aged 34 looking for £100,000 of cover over 20 years vary from around £24.88 via payingtoomuch.com to around £39.24 with Forester Life.
But is this the end of the story?
Which Critical Illnesses are covered?
The number of critical illnesses covered can also be a little misleading as most policies will cover the core conditions of cancer, coronary artery bypass, heart attack, kidney failure, major organ transplant, multiple sclerosis and stroke.
What’s more interesting however is to consider how the insurers deal with some of the most common conditions as this varies widely.
We check our pricing regularly. Here are the results of our research last done on 14 May 2012.
Level Term, £200,000 over 20 years,
non-smoker.
non-smoker.
Age 34
Age 34
Male
Female
Payingtoomuch.com
£9.97
£8.07
comparethemarket.com
£10.64
£8.61
gocompare.com
£10.64
£8.61
confused.com
£10.68
£8.65
More Th>n
£10.88
£8.81
ASDA
£11.78
£9.48
Sainsburys
£11.78
£9.79
Tesco Bank
£14.15
£12.47
TheAA.com
£15.17
£12.22
Consider mastectomy in the presence of ductal carcinoma, (this is an operation to remove your breast).
Bupa’s critical illness insurance will pay out up to 12.5% of the full sum insured or £12,500 whichever is the lower. This payment is made in addition to the policy sum insured and does not reduce the original policy cover or pay-out in any way and does not increase the premiums. In the example quote above the premium for Bupa would have been £30.38pm, 22% higher than the cheapest but nowhere near as expensive as Foresters Life.
Legal & General’s critical illness insurance will pay out up to 25% of the sum insured, up to a maximum of £25,000 and as with Bupa this benefit does not affect the core benefits or increase the premiums in any way.
Aviva, however, do not pay out anything for mastectomy. Their policy will only pay out if the condition becomes even more serious.
Low grade prostate cancer
Low grade prostate cancer is another example of where there are differences in cover. Bupa score highly here too as they will make a partial payment of up to 25% or £25,000 (whichever is the lower), without affecting the core benefits or premiums.
Other conditions where partial payments might be made
By shopping around carefully it’s also possible to cover such fairly common and usually not life threatening conditions such as hysterectomy, Crohn’s disease, removal of the bowel, balloon angioplasty and the insertion of a stent.
Best quote or best cover?
As with most insurance, you generally only find out if your cover was good when you come to claim.
Unfortunately choosing the most expensive is no guarantee you’ll end up with above average cover but at least if you choose the cheapest you’ll get great value for the core conditions.
If you need specific cover for partial pay-outs however, you would be well advised to pay for independent advice for which you would pay a fee to an adviser.