AIG children’s critical illness upgrade
Earlier this month AIG made a sweeping number of improvements with particular attention on children’s critical illness:
In recent years the shift from insurance companies competing purely on price to focusing on the quality of their product has been a significant one. No longer is it enough to simply have the lowest price and hope that a poor set of illness definitions will go unnoticed. This I believe is due to the work of financial advisers highlighting poor areas of cover to customers and the introduction of review sites like trustpilot to put the spotlight back on providers.
One key area of focus has been the cover that the public expects for their kids when they buy a critical illness plan, its important!
Completely new conditions have been added for adults which will pay out 100% of the plan on:
- Intensive care with mechanical intubation,
- Severe mental illness
- Surgical removal of an eyeball
However as welcome as these are (getting a payout, not the illness), the most interesting areas of improvement are around less advanced cancers (skin cancers and cancers in situ), as well as improvements to children’s critical illness cover.
Children’s Critical illness cover has been improved to include an additional payout on diagnosis of:
- Downs syndrome
- Diabetes Mellitus Type 1
- Cerebral palsy
- Cystic fibrosis
- Muscular dystrophy
- Spina bifida
AIG are now offering a market leading plan covering 80 conditions, 42 of which cover the full sum assured, 30 additional payment benefits and seven child specific illness.
Many other providers have also been focusing on Children’s Critical illness; Royal London recently introduced an optional Children’s cover upgrade or even the ability to remove it completely if you don’t have children and want to make your plan a bit cheaper!
Guardian Financial Services are due to release their highly anticipated critical illness policy in late August, with the option to cover your children for critical illness without covering yourself is fresh thinking indeed. We will let you know our thoughts on Guardians new offering closer to the time, but expect full payout on children’s cover automatic plan improvements for existing customers and simplified definitions to name a few.
We don’t think anyone can argue as to whether AIG have one of the best plans available for covering the kids, but the true test as always will come down to the price.
