Critical Illness without Life Insurance

kingstreet

From Scottish Provident's current SA product guide;-

If you choose critical illness benefit on its own, we will not pay a death benefit. However, if you die before you make a critical illness claim, we will pay a benefit of £100.

ACG

I'll take back my comments...i used to work for friends provident and i was never aware of that!

LifeAssure1369

Elfy,

I agree with what the other contributers have said.

There are companies that will offer stand alone critical illness cover but the difference in price is minimal and somethimes cheaper for having life and critical illness together.

Your initial thinking was understandable as you have no dependents, but in this situation you would be better staying with your original policy.

Also your situation may change in the future where you do require life cover and your policy becomes more relevant.

OshayAway

Two other things to factor in... depending how long ago you took out your cover, it may be more comprehensive than current offerings. That's because of tightening up on things like less serious cancers and removing angioplasty definition which is far more routine than a few years ago.

Also, several companies that offer 'stand alone' critical illness cover do not have a guaranteed premium option, only reviewable. So bear that in mind as well.

sweetbutternut

What about being only able to claim once on a policy? Is it true that if you've claimed on the critical illness element, the life element is defunct as you can only claim once? That's why I was thinking of buying a stand alone critical illness policy.

magpiecottage

sweetbutternut wrote: »

What about being only able to claim once on a policy? Is it true that if you've claimed on the critical illness element, the life element is defunct as you can only claim once? That's why I was thinking of buying a stand alone critical illness policy.

If you could claim twice then the premium would reflect that. The reason there is little difference is that in reality you are considerably more likely to suffer a critical illness than die during the term of the policy.

I am going to differ with those who say the premium may be more, though.

If you took out a fixed term/fixed premium policy at, say 25 years old to pay £100K on death or diagnosis of a CI before age 60 and you get another quote at age 50 for exactly the same cover then, if your health has not deteriorated, it will probably be LESS.

This sounds counterintuitive but a new policy will look at the possibility of you claiming in 10 years whilst the old one looked at 35 years. That is 3½ times as long. The likelihood of a claim is not 3½ times as much as the risk goes up with age but the new insurer would not need to worry that you will die at 40 because that cannot now happen.

So replacing the policy MAY save you money. However, you MUST check it is like for like (definitions of critical illness tend to change) and MUST keep the existing policy in force until the new one is up and running.