What exactly is serious illness cover?

Sometimes serious illness cover is confused with critical illness insurance and the two may also be then further confused with something called Accident Sickness and Unemployment insurance.

Here are a few answers to questions relating to these types of cover.

What is critical illness cover compared to serious illness cover?

Both these forms of insurance seek to provide protection against the financial consequence arising from you being diagnosed with a serious/critical illness.

There is no need to consider the exact medical definitions between the use of terms such as critical or serious - what is important is to understand that critical illness cover compared to serious illness protection typically differs in two major respects:

• you may find that a policy providing serious illness cover offers protection against a longer list of conditions;

• typically, a serious illness policy will pay out multiple times if you are diagnosed with various qualifying illnesses over the term of the policy - a critical illness policy will typically only pay out once.

Which would pay out the largest amount?

That is purely related to the nature of the policy (of either type) you have selected and paid for.

How do they pay out?

Once again, the precise conditions will be highlighted on the quotation and associated policy but typically payments are by virtue of a lump-sum.

There may be the requirement for additional medical assessment in some cases.

Why won't existing Accident and Sickness insurance be sufficient?

It may or may not be - it simply depends upon the type of policy it is and what conditions it covers - plus, of course, what your requirements are.

Some sickness insurance is short-term cover aimed at providing a monthly payment if you are unable to work for a period due to ill health or an accident etc. The payments typically last for 12 months or perhaps 24 in some cases.

However, the provisions of such cover may not be sufficient to help you cope with the potentially life-changing circumstances of becoming critically ill. There you may need a substantial and lump-sum payment - which is why serious illness insurance exists.

Does that mean I'll require multiple forms of cover?

Only you can decide what insurance you and your family may require, however, it is important to note that things such as serious illness insurance, sickness cover and life insurance, all cover different risks and circumstances.

Can you combine insurance?

Possibly - that depends upon the insurance provider.

For example, you may be able to have combined life insurance and serious illness cover. In such cases though, you may typically find that you could only claim once - you could not, for example, claim for serious illness then your loved ones claim again sometime later if you were unfortunate enough to die from the condition.