Critical Illness Cover Quotes UK

A Critical illness cover policy is exactly what it says on the tin, a policy that pays out a sum of money (usually a one off lump sum) when the person who is insured under the plan has the misfortune to get one of the listed illnesses under the policy.

Insurance companies have their own list and they are NOT all the same. They do try and outdo each other by adding more and more things to their list in order to gain a business advantage and be able to use it as a selling point.

To be honest though I have worked for many years in the Insurance industry and I can tell you that even though lots of companies have more than 25 illnesses on their lists 95% of all claims are just for 3 things. Heart attacks, Cancer & Stroke.

It is worth having a look what is on the list but as long as it has the main ones I really wouldn’t worry too much.

Main things I’d want on my list would be heart attack, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, blindness, deafness, kidney failure, any major organ transplant, and multiple sclerosis.

Also HIV/AIDS contracted by blood transfusion or during an operation, Parkinson's disease and paralysis.

There is not much that is funny about critical illness cover however many years ago when I worked for Eagle Star I heard about when Allied Dunbar first added “any major organ transplant” to their list.

They had a guy take out a policy for £50,000 and he then donated a kidney to his brother and claimed on the policy. They really didn’t like it but had to pay out.

These days if you check the policy documents of any company’s critical illness policy you will see they all state quite clearly in the section about “major organ transplant” that you have to be the recipient (not the donor).