What is critical illness cover designed to achieve?

If you are wondering what is critical illness cover designed to achieve, the simplest and most straight forward answer is that it aims to give you – and possibly your family – a certain financial security in the event of you being diagnosed with a critical illness.

Why might you need it?

If you are diagnosed with a serious or critical illness, it is likely that your life might change in a number of ways. Perhaps one of the most immediate of these is your ability to work, earn money and provide for you and your family.

Depending on the particular medical condition and its seriousness, you might have to give up work altogether or reduce the number of hours you are able to put in. In either event, of course, your normal regular income is likely to suffer.

In the case of a debilitating serious illness, you might find that you need to employ help around the home or engage the services of a professional carer or nurse. If your disabilities become more severe, you might even need to consider adapting or modifying the home you live in.

All in all, therefore, the diagnosis of a serious or critical illness might lead to your finances becoming severely stretched.

How might insurance help?

So, what is critical illness cover – or serious illness cover, as it is sometimes called – able to do to help?

It does it quite simply by paying out an assured, tax-free cash benefit soon after you are diagnosed with a critical or serious illness. You choose the amount of the cash benefit in advance, together with the duration of the cover you need. The amount of the benefit and the duration of your serious illness cover, of course, help to determine the cost of the monthly premiums you pay.

What is critical illness cover designed to insure you against? An equally important part of that answer, of course, is the range of illnesses and medical conditions defined by the insurer as serious or critical. You may find that the list of such illnesses is extensive or relatively restricted, depending on the particular policy you choose – and, of course, the cost of the premiums you are prepared to pay.

In other words, you are unlikely to find any hard and fast rules about the critical illnesses covered in all such insurance policies.

The important consideration, however, is to select the policy that most suits your own, personal needs and circumstances. Understanding which conditions and illnesses are included in the particular policy you choose may go a long way to your appreciation of just what is critical illness cover. Alternatively, using the services of specialist broker may help.