Compare Critical Illness

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).

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.