Archive for October, 2008

What is group critical illness insurance ?

Friday, October 31st, 2008

In case you are a small business owner and one of your best workers gets caught with a serious illness, it can considerably impact the productivity of your business. Moral breakdowns will occur as stress will start to take the ascendant on you. The fluidity at which your business runs could be impacted due to the loss of precious skills and management. Your business could be driven towards losing important profits. Fortunately, critical illness insurance is around to take care of such issues. But it would still be hard to find another person to replace the sick worker.

If your worker has contracted a severe disease such as cancer or stroke, you will not be aware when or if he will be able to resume duty. The employee can remain out of office for months or even a year. What do you do in such a situation? You can do certain things but at first you need to ponder well over ideas. Will you recruit another person to replace your sick employee? How much time will it take you to get the right person? You should bear in mind that the longer you wait to get the right candidate; the more your business will be impacted. Lost sales and profits have to be considered. Regarding this matter, many companies have yet to have critical illness insurance to remain protected against such eventualities.

Possible explanations could be that companies haven’t yet taken the time to analyse possible problems or they might have found such insurance too expensive. Thankfully, a solution has been found: group critical illness insurance has been introduced. Group critical illness insurance gives the company the choice to cover the employees that it wants. It is the company that will undertake the responsibility of paying premiums and in case of illness; it will receive benefits from the insurance company. The company will be able to make a claim if one or more employees suffer from an illness mentioned in the policy. The critical illness insurance policy may contain coverage for common illness conditions.

Do you recommend critical illness insurance ?

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Coping with medical charges for critical illness conditions such as cancer or heart attack can be very costly in the UK. The advancements in the medical field have caused treatment costs to rise almost accordingly. People who have enough savings may be able to deal with high treatment charges. But in most of the cases, critical illness insurance can be vital during such moments.

 

There are many stories where people have gone bankrupt trying to pay out their medical bills. So, you have to be aware that although you have considerable savings, upon contracting a critical illness, you may be left with conditions that restrict you from going to work. Therefore, taking out critical illness insurance can be one of the wisest financial decisions you could take. A critical illness cover is a type of insurance that pays out a tax free lump sum upon diagnosis of an illness accepted by the policy. Furthermore, critical illness insurance awards a living benefit. Therefore, you pay monthly or yearly premiums, depending on the agreement you had made, to ensure that you will be protected in case of serious illness. Should you then be unfortunate enough to contract a critical illness, you may be awarded benefits by your insurance company.

Critical illness insurance in a very good idea if you want to offer close family and yourself a little bit of extra protection. It can help you through days that are going to be miserable anyway if you are suffering from a critical illness. A lump sum payment will help to take away any other worries or finacial problems you may be suffering from at the time.

What other options are there available when taking out a critical illness policy?

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Having a critical illness policy means that the policy pays out on the event of suffering from a critical illness of which all are specified in each provider’s key facts or handbook the number of critical illness can change from provider’s.

Typically you can add to choose the following to most critical illness policies such as the Total Permanent Disability, Reinstatement Option and/or Indexation Option.

You can add Total Permanent Disability to any person taking out a critical illness policy. This means that the benefit (cover amount) will be paid to the policyholder if they were unable to carry out their normal daily duties. Total Permanent Disability will have a different meaning from one person to the next as it can be related to their own occupation, suited occupation or typically if they can carry out three of their normal daily activities. Also by adding the Reinstatement Option this means that you would be allowed to take out a new policy only after successfully making a claim from your provider, however you would not then be covered for the full list of critical illness but for example the following conditions would still be typically applied to the new policy: Third Degree Burns, HIV Infection, Aorta Graft Surgery, Major Organ Transplant, Multiple Sclerosis, Kidney Failure, Heart Attack, Stoke, Bacterial Meningitis, Liver Failure, Parkinson’s Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Cardiomyopathy and Aplastic Anaemia. Finally you could also add the Indexation Option to your policy as this will help to protect your benefit amount chosen. This usually works by the benefit amount increasing in line with the current RPI (Retail Price Index).

What critical illnesses are covered in the majority of contracts.

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Each contract offers a number of different condtions. It is important from the outset to understand what is covered and what isnt as this can only lead to confusion if a claim had to be made. It is hard to explain exactly what each contract specfically covers as this would take all day to explain however what you should be looking for is: Alzheiemer’s Disease, Aorta Graft Surgery (Operation to main artery in body), Aplastic Anaemia ( Disease of blood cells in the bone marrow), Bacterial Menigitis, Benign Brain Tumour, Blindness, Cancer, Cardiomyopathy (Disorder of the heart muscle), Chronic Lung Disease, Coma, Coronary Artery by Pass Grafts, Crautzfeldt-Jakob disease( Degenerative organic brain disease), Deafness, Dementia, Heart Attack, Heart Valve replacement or repair, HIV infection, Kidney Failure, Liver Failure, Loss of Hands or Feet, Loss of independent existence, Loss of speech, Major Organ transplant, Motor neurone disease, Multiple sclerosis, Paralysis of limbs, Parkinsons disease, Progressive supranuclear palsy(Tremors in the limbs or head), Stroke, Third Degree Burns and Traumatic Head Injury.

This is a fairly comprehensive list however not exhaustive the poorer contracts offer cover on 25 critical illnesses the better ones anything up to 40 conditions. The main claims are made on cancer, heart attack and stroke.