The amount of Critical Illness Cover you need depends entirely on your situation - and of course the level of cover you want.
If you are single with no debts and have no children, you are likely to need less cover than someone is married, has a mortgage, large credit card debts and a wife and 2 children to think about. It also depends on what capital you have available and what income you might receive from pensions or investments.
A good starting point is to calculate your monthly expenses - you can do this online using our budget calculator which is included in the life insurance section of the Finance Navigator.
Most people add an additional lump sum onto their outstanding debts to provide an extra amount of capital that can be used for any purpose in the event of being diagnosed with a critical illness.
When deciding how much cover you need to start with, it's also worth bearing inflation in mind. It would be awful to start a policy now and claim on it in 15 years time only to find that it just doesn't have any where near the buying power that you hoped it would have, just when you need it. You can help offset the effect of inflation by including an 'indexation option' when you first set your plan up.
The indexation option helps to ensure that the benefits payable from your plan keep in line with inflation over the term of your policy to help maintain the buying power of the amount paid out.
To research your critical illness position further you can use our exclusive interactive research tool, the critical illness finance navigator.
