Help! Critical Illness Plus Insurance with FWD

Hi anon,

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If you're going with a term plan to cover critical illness, a few things that you might want to think about:

1. Coverage duration: As you have mentioned, how long should you cover for? If you purely consider income replacement, covering till 65 might be sufficient. However, if something happens at 66, you have to be content with the fact that there will be no payout.
2. Coverage scope: The plan covers the 37 late CI and 3 early stage CIs. Is that good enough for you? If it is, great. If not, is such a plan truly meeting your needs? Granted that heart attack, cancer and stroke are the most common claims, however consider if life happens to roll the dice poorly for you and you end up with early stage kidney failure, for example. What would you do in such a situation?
3. Total Premiums: If you're covering till age 85, consider a whole life with CI/ECI rider instead. You're probably paying $2.2K/yr for $300K coverage with FWD, but till age 85 which is 60 years of premiums amounting to over $120K at a minimum. A whole life plan with full ECI rider may cost, say, $3K-ish for 25 years and cover you for $300K till age 86 at least (and still covers you after that), for maybe a total of $75++K. You're actually paying lesser and getting lifetime coverage!

Now it's important to note that I'm not dismissing FWD's plan. I just want you to be aware of the options that are also available to you as well as other factors that you should consider when it comes to critical illness coverage. Naturally this isn't exhaustive since we haven't considered your personal circumstances, but you should work with an advisor to examine your options before you commit.

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If budget not an issue, go for the longest duration.