Critical illness insurance cover is also known as dread disease insurance, which has been borne out of a definite need as illness should never be your biggest lifetime expense, particularly when you most need it.

This product has been designed so that your service provider will pay out a lump sum of money should the policy holder be diagnosed with one of the specific diseases that are stipulated on a predetermined list on your insurance policy schedule.

As the world of medicine becomes more advanced and increasingly progressive, and while the quest for taking health more seriously has become the norm for many, suffering a debilitating blow due to illness and disease could mean that certain individuals are no longer able to enjoy the same levels of mobility and good health they did in the past.

Your diminished ability to work and the escalation of medical treatments and costs could mean that patients need to make severe lifestyle adjustments and changes.

A lump sum will be paid out which is tax-free and which they will be able to use in any form whatsoever – in other words, there are no restrictions regarding how you spend your pay-out.

Critical illness insurance will cover you for:

• Alzheimer’s.
• Heart attacks.
• Various types of cancer.
• Stroke.
• Parkinson’s, and many other maladies all depending on what your service provider stipulates.

Additionally, your dread disease cover could cover injuries from accidents if you are left a quadriplegic or paraplegic, are brain damaged or suffer damage caused by severe burning.

Critical illness insurance cover is useful when there is a shortfall in your medical aid pay-outs, and will stop the gap for extras when your income is reduced due to any lifestyle changes.

Furthermore, new treatments and advancements in medicine cost a lot – to gain access to these and other high-tech treatments it will be useful to have the extra money to pursue, as these are seldom covered by your conventional medical aid.