An insurer will always need a medical certification that a critical illness has been diagnosed along with the certification of death upon submission of a claim. Before you have even been accepted for a policy you will need to go through the underwriting process. This will involve the applicant providing personal information such as name, address, and date of birth, medical history, family history and many more. Should you or your family have a history of anything medical it may result in the applicant being asked for further information? The information that the insurer may request and it totally up to their discretion may be a telephone interview, a medical examination, medical tests such as blood, urine or cotinine tests, a general practitioners report or even just further information from the doctor. If they request this don't be alarmed as it is pretty much standard should you have ailments that they may be concerned about. Once the insurer has received all the information they need, and this could be a number of the things listed not just one, some time may have passed.
Typically an insurance company will offer you cover as soon as you have applied for it, by this I mean that while the underwriting process is undergone you will be covered if you do not have an offer. Underwriting can take anything from and instant decision to months possibly a year before you have a decision. When you apply you can expect to have dependant upon your health an instant decision with an offer, a deferment period - until you are fuller better, a postponement period, or the insurer may require further information from various sources. There are a few different choices of cover when it comes to critical illness you can have a level or a decreasing cover. Level cover is where the amount you insure for - the sum insured remains the same throughout the duration of the policy. A decreasing cover can run alongside a mortgage and will coincide with this and decrease as the mortgage does and if something was to happen, dependant on the type of policy that you had then your mortgage could be paid off with the amount of money from the insurance company.
Choosing an insurance product for yourself that is not required by law can be very daunting and be a difficult situation. First of all the questions of do I really need this, why should I add to my out goings and it will never pay out are often ones brought to peoples minds. Life and critical illness insurances are often snubbed as being a waste of money but if you think about it logically, we never know what is going to happen to us so if we are responsible enough we can afford to pay for something which could effectively be a savings policy in a round about way. By this we mean that you are paying a monthly instalment every month and should you develop a confirmed critical illness or die then you or your loved ones could potentially be paid out the tax free lump sum. This money can be used in the ways that you or your loved ones choose. I know this is no conciliation for developing a critical illness or even dying nut it can help alleviate the cash flow problems in the household should this ever happen. You can decide upon the amount you wish to cover you and your loved ones for. If you were to take out a joint policy the benefits will only be paid out once, this means that the policy will be cancelled once a claim is submitted. If the second person insured was to then die or develop a critical illness then they would not be able to submit a claim. In this instance if you were looking to maximize the protection that you had on offer you would need to consider taking out two separate policies. This unfortunately can be slightly more expensive but the benefits will effectively double. Always remember with critical illness insurance that the insurance company is not just going to pay out for everything diagnosed. At the point where you are thinking about taking this type of cover out, you will need to research carefully the amount of conditions covered and the exclusions that companies have in force.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")