Critical Illness Cover
Critical Illness cover provides a lump sum payment if you suffer from one of the specified conditions. Adding Critical Illness cover to your life policy will ease the burden for you and your family, if the need arises.
If you add Critical Illness cover to your policy we’ll pay the owner of your policy a tax-free lump sum payment if they are diagnosed with one of the twenty four conditions covered under the policy.
The most common reasons we’ll pay a critical illness claim are for cancer diagnosis but you’ll also be covered in the event of a heart attack, stroke and many other conditions.
Here’s the basics:
Getting covered
- When you apply for life cover you can also choose to apply for critical illness cover. We’ll assess your application and add it to your policy if you are eligible.
- You can apply for cover if you are aged 20 to 59 and living in NZ, Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Hong Kong or Singapore.
- All of our policies have a 30 day free look period, so you can buy with confidence
Once your policy is in place
- When life changes – you get married, divorced, take out a mortgage or become a parent, you may be able to increase your cover by up to 50% with no medical questions asked,
- You can decrease your critical illness cover or remove it from your life cover policy at any time without penalty.
- Your payments will increase each year as you get older.
- Critical illness cover ends when you turn 70.
When you need to claim on your policy
- You will get a cash lump-sum payment of up to $625,000 (depending on the cover amount you’ve selected).
- Your level of life cover will reduce by that amount,
- Your claim will be paid in New Zealand Dollars anywhere in the world, to the person who owns the policy.
- Your policy will be reinsured by Hannover Life Re, one of the largest reinsurers of life insurance in the world
What else?
- If you don’t apply for critical illness with your life cover you may have the option of adding a 25% serious illness cover to your policy, this will cover you for the four main reasons that people claim on their illness cover. It’s different than critical illness cover which will cover you for 24 different conditions.
- Critical illness and serious illness are also known as trauma cover. Every company has a different version of trauma cover, read our definitions in the links below.
