About Dread Disease Insurance

Having extracted as much premium as they can for death and disability insurance, Life Assurance companies have innovated yet another form of insurance to help them part your hard earned money from you.

And to make sure you are suitably terrified not to buy it, they have named it "dread disease" cover. The name alone inspires shivers down one's spine.

Regardless of my cynicism, this kind of insurance, more subtly described as "severe illness" or "critical illness" insurance has an important place in your portfolio.

So what does it cover and what role does it play? Do you need it?

Dread Disease cover addresses the financial consequences of severe illnesses like cancer and heart disease (and a hospital full of other really nasty ailments). These illnesses very often have a severe impact on your life, but are not covered by disability insurance because they do not always result in a permanent inability to do your job. Consider someone who must undergo chemotherapy. Once sick leave and annual leave is used up, any time off needed to deal with the side effects of such severe treatment results in loss of income. A lump sum payment from a dread disease claim would buy a little welcome time off. The payment could also cover any shortfall of medical aid benefits that may crop up - funny how that happens for traetments that do not invovle full-time hospitalisation!
Many companies also make provision for dread disease cover for your children - you may find you need more time off for them than you would for yourself. Basically, covering dread disease provides for continued financial security amidst a temporary (hopefully) crisis.
And don't think you are immune from these diseases; Death claims from illness as well as dreads disease claims are primarily from cancer and heart disease - the statisics are frightening. Increased stress and poor eating habits are increasing the likelihood of these two conditions dramatically.

Many of you will have taken at least some of this cover when you took life insurance, but most of you don't enjoy paying insurance premiums and have either taken small amounts of dread disease cover or have excluded it completely. I'd like you to reconsider.

You can add dread disease cover onto your existing policy or you can take a dread disease policy on it's own.

For the detail oriented, here are some basic technical tidbits:

• Your cover can be for serious incidences only; cheaper and pays the whole amount of cover when a claim is admissible, or it can allow for less serious incidences and pay varying amounts based on the severity of the condition.
• Dread disease can be limited to a shorter list of diseases or can address the issue more comprehensively.
• Dread Disease can be an advance payment of life cover (Your dread disease claim reduces your death benefit) or it can be a separate insured amount.

Many people have benefits that pay only for severe incidences - better cover may cost a litle more, but could really be a real help.
Over the last few years, big advances have been made regarding dread disease cover and if you wish to have excellent benefits, you may wish to ask us to discuss this cover with you.