Critical illness cover! Argh!!

I ran into the same problem when looking for cover when I bought my house.

I never did find anyone that will cover Type 1, think my adviser did mention something about Aviva being a little more "progressive" in their vie of diabetics but I didn't find any products at the time that seemed to work for me.

Admittedly I didn't look too hard since I checked with the cover I Have as part of my benefits package at work and it turns out I was covered on that one fine.

Shout if you do find something.

/A

I googled it and there are some companies out there that do cover Type 1 diabetics.

You could Google it yourself but I did find Insurance Surgery and also Ageas.

I've never heard of these companies, so don't know how good they are. Have a look yourself, maybe you'll find some other companies.

Sarahkylie88 said:

I'm being punished should I get something like cancer

Click to expand...

You can get insurance against cancer, both my wife and I have a joint policy which would pay out around 25k on diagnosis, the policy costs £9 a month which was a fixed around 12 years ago.

Unfortunately critical life policies are hard to come about or are heavily loaded, when looking for life cover several years ago I got a joint policy with a company called Cornhill Insurance which was later took over by Phoenix Life, it was a Decreasing Life Term policy for mortgage purposes but was heavily loaded as expected.

Share your frustration @Sarahkylie88

Sarahkylie88 said:

This is a massive bugbear of mine!

I have got some form of life insurance, think it's pretty rubbish! But I am unable to get critical illness cover! I take good care of myself and feel I'm being punished should I get something like cancer (God forbid) which is completely unrelated to diabetes yet I can't get any form of illness cover because I have type one diabetes! Do they not think all of this is punishment enough, I've never smoked, rarely drink and generally take good care of my diabetes and I am too much of a high risk to insure... Yet if there was someone who sat on their backside all day smoking and drinking they could get critical Illness cover!?! Sorry for the rant. I really felt like saying all of this to the guy on the phone but I felt sorry for him because it wasn't his fault! Has anyone got successful Critical illness cover? Is there anywhere that does it?

Click to expand...

There are a couple of companies who will cover T1s now, but it's highly likely to be at a loaded premium, based on both your T1 status and your overall health and diabetes control. Of course, as well as looking back at your history, they will be weighing up the odds of something going wrong in the future. Again, some will be your personal risk, and some based on the general view of T1s.

The unfortunate thing is diabetes can affect so many parts of the body (as if we didn't know!), and whilst Cancer is unlikely to be diabetes related, so many of the other conditions could - heart attack and stroke being core conditions of any cover I know of.

I spent many years working for insurance companies, whose products included life cover. None of my former employers covers T1s.

There was a thread on this a while ago where someone had managed to find cover, so a search and read would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I can't recall who started the thread.

In terms of how you approach it though, please ensure you are seeing an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA), as opposed to an advisor from, say a Bank. The IFA has access to a far wider range of products, although it's worthwhile knowing many work from preferred panels of providers, so many not have access to truly the whole market. Please ensure you find that out.

Good luck with it all. I really do wish you well. If you find a provider, it would be great if you could post it for future reference?

Also, have a think about whether you really need critical illness cover - if you've got a decent employer with decent sick pay you might think critical illness cover isn't really worth it. So double check work illness policy before deciding whether a loaded premium for type 1s is actually worth it.

Obviously, if you're self employed critical illness cover is going to be much more important.

I'm Type 2 on insulin (DKA prone). I've also had a few ICU stays and totally agree with you on any form of insurance for diabetics. I am currently thinking of going to Tenerife in September and think the travel/health cover is going to cost more than the holiday. Bummer.