Our critical illness cover can either be bought as a product on its own known as Critical Illness, or it can be combined with Life Insurance.

If you were seriously ill, how would you cope financially?

Whether it’s taking time off work, making adaptations to your home or ensuring that you had childcare, critical illness cover is there to help you focus on getting better without worrying about how to pay the bills. Our critical illness cover offers different levels of protection that can be tailored to suit yours and your family’s needs.

What is critical illness cover?

Our critical illness cover pays out a set amount of money that you select when you apply. We will pay out if, during the policy term, you’re diagnosed with one of our list of critical illnesses, and you survive for 10 days. Depending on the definition, critical illnesses may pay on diagnosis only, when the condition has progressed to a specified severity or when named treatments or surgeries are performed. You may also receive smaller payments for less serious conditions or if your child was to develop one of the conditions listed in our definitions. It’s important to know that we only cover the critical illnesses covered in our policy and no others.

Why choose critical illness cover?

Great variety of options to help you and your family have the level of cover that you want and need.

Critical illness cover will pay out the full amount if you are diagnosed with certain conditions within the policy term.

It offer smaller additional payments for Breast and Prostate Cancer that won’t affect the rest of your policy.

Children’s cover:  can be included for children between 30 days and 18 years old (21 if in full time education).

You have the option to cover two lives (known as a joint policy).

You can choose:

Level cover: pays the cover amount as a cash lump sum on a successful claim. The cover amount stays the same throughout the policy term.

Decreasing cover: pays the cover amount as a cash lump sum on a successful claim. The cover amount decreases each month, broadly in line with the amount outstanding on a repayment loan, such as a capital and interest mortgage, using a fixed interest rate selected at the start of the policy.

Family income cover: pays the cover amount as monthly instalments on a successful claim. The monthly instalment stays the same throughout the policy term and is payable from the date we accept a claim until the policy end date. We’ll pay more in total if a claim is made in the early years than towards the end of a policy.

Ways to personalise your cover:

These can all be added to your cover for an additional cost when you take out cover. Some of these options may only be available if you’re accepted on standard terms. Also, some options may only be available if you choose level or family income cover - your financial adviser can explain more about these.

Adding upgraded critical illness cover or upgraded children’s critical illness benefit for extra peace of mind.

Include Extra Care Cover to help with conditions that might cause more of a significant impact. Extra Care Cover is available as an optional add-on to our Life Insurance with critical illness cover and our Critical Illness policies. Extra Care Cover pays out an additional £50,000 of cover if a successful critical illness claim is made and the critical illness has a prolonged life changing impact.

You can customise your cover by adding Fracture Cover.

Waiver of premium: if you’re unable to work due to illness or injury we could pay your premiums for you.

Total Permanent Disability: we will pay out if you are unable to ever do your job again due to a permanent illness or injury. This pays out the full cover amount. Depending on your job, this will either pay out the cover amount if you are unable to perform your own job ever again or if you are permanently failing 3 of the listed activities of daily work (walking, climbing, lifting, bending, getting in and out of a car, writing).

Increasing cover:  this is a good way to protect your cover against inflation. The amount you are covered for will increase, as will your premiums at a higher percentage rate.

Renewal option:  this lets you renew your cover at the end of your policy without us asking any further medical questions.

Things to consider:

• The policy has no cash in value at any time.
• If you stop paying your premiums, we’ll stop providing cover
  and premiums will not be refunded.
• If you have taken out Critical Illness as a standalone product, we will not pay out if you die.

You will need to read the policy conditions to know exactly what you are covered for. There are different levels of severity required for each condition.

We will only pay out the full amount once, after this your cover will end. If you choose to add extra care cover to your policy, you may be able to claim on this for up to one year after the initial claim.