Why should I consider combining my Critical Illness cover with Life Insurance?

There are two good reasons to combine your critical illness insurance with your life insurance policy. Number one - the policy may well be cheaper than buying them separately, and number two, if you died within the survival period (see below), a claim can still be made under the terms of your Life Insurance cover.

It is likely that combining the two forms of insurance into one policy will be a cheaper option - the reason for this is that insurance companies apply internal company tax allowances to their pricing of combined policies, and these options are not available for stand-alone Critical Illness policies.

Another issue you'll need to think about is that Critical Illness policies have what is called a “survival period” - which mean that to make a valid claim you must survive for a minimum number of days, normally 28 days following diagnosis. If you died within the survival period then no claim can be made on a stand-alone critical illness policy. However if you also have life insurance included within the policy then a claim can be made under the terms of the life cover.

Please note most combined Life and Critical Illness policies are sold on a first event basis - so if you make a claim under critical illness then the policy automatically terminates and you will not have any life cover.