Yes it is. Critical illness insurance has become more and more consumer friendly over recent years and as such single life and joint life plans are available.
In a bid to ensure customers can always get what they want insurance companies have introduced a variety of policies, including some that you can hold with your partner, and others that combine with aspects of life assurance.
Policies that allow you to share cover with a spouse/partner can save you money on your premiums, however, this is not always the best way to arrange this type of plan. Often the cover on joint policies expires as soon as the first one of the insured names makes a claim. This potentially leaves the other partner with no cover in place.
So if you fell ill and claimed on the money, then two years later your partner also fell ill, having already received benefit from the plan, there may be nothing left to pay out.
To research Joint policies and your CIC position further you can use our online personal finance consultant, the Finance Navigator
Combined life assurance and critical illness insurance policies are becoming more and more popular, not least because the premiums are often more competitive than stand alone critical illness only plans.
However, it's important for you to check if the life assurance aspect element of your policy expire's if you claim on the critical illness cover. This may not be a problem to you anyway but it is important for you to know so that if it is you can choose a plan where this does not have to happen.
The reason that this is important is that if you have a plan that expires on first claim, regardless of the fact that its a critical illness claim that paid out first, you need to be aware that if at a later stage you were to die (regardless of whether or not this was as a result of your illness) your family would not receive any further money from your policy.
Combined 'life or earlier critical illness' plans like these are very popular and are often a cheaper alternative than a critical illness only plan but failing to at least think about this issue could cause your family problems in the event of your death after you had suffered a critical illness, especially when you bear in mind that it may not be possible to get life assurance cover having suffered a critical illness prior to applying for cover.
To research your critical illness position further you can use our exclusive interactive research tool, the critical illness finance navigator.
