Critical illness cover

henry24

Can anyone offer any advice concerning the above? I'm 59 divorced with no family so not bothered about life insurance but I have got a mortgage until I'm 70 so been thinking about what would happen if I had to stop working 

lisyloo

Permanent health insurance is better in my (lay persons) opinion.
critical illness only covers you for certain illnesses.
phi covers you if you cannot work.

There is indeed a risk you couldn’t work and wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage.
it won’t be cheap to cover the age 59-70.
the best thing you can do to get a good price is to have a longer deferred period I.e. have some savings e.g. 6 months and take a policy that only pays out if for example you are ill for longer than 6 months.
this lowers the chance of a payout and makes the insurance cheaper.

henry24

Thank you for your reply, I'd never heard of phi so will look into that. I am fortunate that the company I work for pays full pay for 12 months sick so I'm wondering what would happen to my mortgage after that. I've only had 4 sick days in 43 years so maybe worrying needlessly 

Sandtree

henry24 said:

Thank you for your reply, I'd never heard of phi so will look into that. I am fortunate that the company I work for pays full pay for 12 months sick so I'm wondering what would happen to my mortgage after that. I've only had 4 sick days in 43 years so maybe worrying needlessly 

PHI is normally sold under the more consumer friendly name of "Income Protection" but the downside of that name is that ASU (aka PPI) is also sold under the same name these days but the former is a long term protection and you could set it to pay out until you are 70 whereas the later is a short term policy with annual premium reviews and pay out for 12-24 months tops. 

CI tends to split opinion, those that have claimed and got a large lump sum clearly think its great but you'll find many who've been very ill and unable to claim because either their condition isnt on the list or didnt have all the right markers. Its other issue is your policy is fixed at time of purchase and doesnt move with medical science. So an uncle had a policy that covered open chest surgery, he needed an op several years later that at the time of purchase would have been open chest but by the time he needed it was now done by keyhole and so no payout. 

Clearly the best outcome on any of these policies is that you dont get ill and so policy expires with no claims ever made.