Recommend a Term life with Critical Illness

Hi anon,

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If you are intending to buy a term plan with CI cover, consider the following (non-exhaustive) factors

1. Coverage duration. Adding CI cover to a term plan will be via a rider. Thus if you want your term plan to cover till, say, age 70, but your CI cover to cover till 75, you can't do that, and will have to purchase separately
2. Additional vs accelerated coverage. Having a $1M D/TPD term plan with $500K CI typically means that if you get CI first, $500K is paid out, and if you then subsequently pass on, the remaining $500K is then paid. This can make a lot of difference. Was your intention to get a payout of $500K in the event of CI, and still hvae $1M in the event you are gone? If so, the term plan has to be configured as a $1.5M D/TPD term with $500K accelerated CI cover. Not all CI coverage comes as additional cover, most are accelerated. Multipay CI riders tend to be additional however
3. Multipay. Frankly, the premiums have now come to a point where it may be worth having recurrent CI cover in my view. A heart attack survivor is always at risk of another heart attack, a stroke survivor's chance of a second stroke is statistically higher (backed by evidence) and one of my clients who is a oncologist has told me that cancers do come back. So consider if multipay will be something that would play a part in your portfolio.

With that in mind, you can then start to explore the various options. There are technicalities of course, like TPD coverage for some insurers requiring 2 doctors to certify instead of 1, but by and large Death and TPD plans are quite similar. The difference will largely lie with scope of coverage for early CI, and multipay CI.

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Any IFA should be able to let you know costs of a term plan across the various insurers. I won't be recommending any particular insurers, but I can say that I'm seeing most clients gravitate towards one or two that are well-priced yet comprehensive.

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Good luck!

When you say "additonal," do you mean you already have a plan with CI and want to enhance the coverage amount with a term plan?