What other options are there with a Critical Illness policy?

There are a number of optional extras with critical illness insurance - you should consider life insurance for a start. Then you need to think about Waiver of Premium and Indexation.

Life Insurance

A combined life and critical illness insurance policy may be cheaper than buying a critical illness policy on its own. This is because insurance companies can apply various internal company tax allowances to combined policies which cannot be applied to stand-alone Critical Illness policies. It's not cheaper every single time, but it is worth checking out.

Waiver of Premium

"Waiver of Premium" gives you the peace of mind of knowing that if you can't meet your monthly premium payments because you have fallen sick or had an accident, and are unable to work - the insurance company will pay your monthly premium for you. You need to make sure you choose Waiver of Premium at the time of application because it cannot be added on later. You also need to be aged under 55 and be in full time employment.

Indexation

If you want the value of your sum insured to increase in line with inflation, then you need to get an Index-Linked policy. This works by the insurance company performing a calculation on a yearly basis, to see how much your cover needs to increase by to match inflation. As a result your monthly premiums will increase.

You don't need to worry about Index Linking if your critical illness insurance policy is tied to a mortgage loan.