When taking out critical illness cover what does it mean by survival period?

The roads are becoming more and more congested with vehicles and the higher number of cars the more accidents that occur and although safety has improved people still die from car accidents. People will also always suffer from illnesses which may not be able to be cured and medication may only prolong the illness. If this were to happen at a relatively young age, you may have some financial commitments that may leave your family to struggle financially if you were unable to work and could not afford such commitments for example the mortgage on your family home.

Critical illness cover is taken out to help protect you and your family in such an event if diagnosed with a listed critical illness. The critical illness would need to be diagnosed by a consultant who the insurance provider you originally took out the plan with would then write to them to confirm such diagnosis. The survival period within such critical illness cover is the length of time of which you have to survive past the diagnosis of the critical illness, if you were to not survive such a period then the critical illness cover would not payout. Such a survival period is included in typically in most insurance plan and would normally be around fourteen days so if you were to survive to day fifteen after diagnosis then the policy would then payout the agreed sum assured. This is where it would then be good advice for you to include life insurance when taking out any critical illness cover as if you were to die before those fourteen days then the life insurance which was built into the policy would then payout so your family would receive the lump sum.

The survival period on such an insurance plan is some what standard practice and there are other parts of the contract which you need to consider in order to ensure that the plan is what you want it to be in terms of the comprehensiveness of the contract or even what the level of cover you require as it may be difficult to identify the precise level of cover you need. The survival period within the contract will be the same whether you take out a single application or a joint application if you were to look at covering your partner also. There are many others reasons why it may be beneficial to take out such insurance as it also covers your children up to a certain age and for a specified level of cover or a certain percentage of the sum assured you took out.

The number of illnesses included within such a plan will also differ from one provider to another so you should consider what it is you would be covered for to ensure that you are covered for a high number of critical illnesses as this would then be the cover that would cover you for the duration of the plan. Such insurance plans do change from time to time and in some cases the plans become more comprehensive however this does not automatically happen to existing contracts and therefore if in the future you want to increase the level of cover then you may want to consider a new contract depending on the cost of the plan as you would then be older but also your health circumstances may have also changed which could then affect the new terms on the contract which may not make it worthwhile changing and would be more beneficial to keep your existing plan.

This is not always the case for some people seeking critical illness cover

as they may suffer from a serious illness or be involved in an accident perhaps which has resulted in an early death for some individuals.