Critical illness cover

chrisjordan2008

Morning All!

just wanted to ask a question re critical illness cover and mortgages before I potentially go and make a hoooooge mistake :eek:

wifey Jordan and I are foreseeing a spot of financial bother on the horizon and are tightening belts before its too late, our mortgage comes up for negotiation April next year but while we were checking this out we noticed we each pay for critical illness cover in addition to our life insurance. This was all arranged by our broker when we took the mortgage back in 2018

my wife's crit illness cover is circa £40 a month and mine is similar, my plan was to cancel my wife's one and shop around for a better deal on mine and then cancel that. we would keep the life insurance, but potentially change that when we re do the mortgage? although now I type that I think sod it and redo the lot if it saves us some dosh?

I can't see anything in any of the three policies that says we can't do this, has anyone any knowledge that would say different?

our life insurance policy covers the full mortgage value plus a bit extra, I am the main earner in the household and am responsible for the key bills (mortgage, utilities, CT, etc). we also have separate building contents cover that I pay.

we're thinking our annual saving could be at least £500, probably more if we renegotiate my crit illness and even more if we redid the life ins

any advice greatfully received

sal_III

Your LI/CIC has zero connection with your mortgage. There is no requirement to have them in order to have a mortgage.

You can change or cancel your insurance policies at will, regardless of when your mortgage is due to expire.

Weighty1

sal_III wrote: »

You can change or cancel your insurance policies at will, regardless of when your mortgage is due to expire.

Unless there was an agreed with your mortgage broker that they'd arrange this in lieu of charging you a fee OR if you signed a fee agreement with whoever you used. These don't always stand up to scrutiny but they CAN.

It would be worth checking to see if you signed anything when taking the insurance out to bind you into keeping it for a certain number of years (generally 4).

csgohan4

if you are considering shopping around, do so BEFORE cancelling your current policy. The older you get the more expensive these policies become, so it may not be cheaper potentially. Get a broker who can search the whole market

chrisjordan2008

Weighty1 wrote: »

It would be worth checking to see if you signed anything when taking the insurance out to bind you into keeping it for a certain number of years (generally 4).

I'll go through it again to double check, the only thing I saw on the Aviva paperwork was a small section on cancelling where it said you have the usual 14 days at the start and then can cancel any time from 6 months onwards. will be combing it again to check though.

csgohan4 wrote: »

if you are considering shopping around, do so BEFORE cancelling your current policy.

yes good advice thank you, the plan is to cancel the wife's one and keep/renegotiate/meerkat the remaining CIC and the life policy

:beer:

sal_III

chrisjordan2008 wrote: »

I'll go through it again to double check, the only thing I saw on the Aviva paperwork was a small section on cancelling where it said you have the usual 14 days at the start and then can cancel any time from 6 months onwards. will be combing it again to check though.

yes good advice thank you, the plan is to cancel the wife's one and keep/renegotiate/meerkat the remaining CIC and the life policy

:beer:

It might not show on the Aviva paperwork, it might be only on some paperwork from the broker, as they are paid commission in advance and Aviva is looking for a minimum period for your insurance to run to pay for it. The Aviva+ that you most likely have is only available through brokers and offers better coverage than the consumer products for roughly the same price.

Especially with CIC there is much more to it than price, so don't just go for the cheapest that offers £X payout. Aviva+ for example have some excellent add-ons that cover treatment abroad including family members in addition to the one off payment.

chrisjordan2008

I think safest thing will be to speak to our broker and check I haven't missed anything and then go from there

thank you to everyone for the thoughts and advice :beer: