You should always be prepared for the unexpected, this is one of the main reasons for taking out critical illness insurance. Obviously nobody wants to become critically ill, but you never know what life is going to throw at you next.

There has been statistics produced saying that in the UK a third of the population will suffer from some form of cancer at some stage in their life and quarter of the population will actually die from cancer. Cancer is covered under a critical illness policy although there are severity levels set by each individual company who the policy is taken with.

There has also been a lot of research done into heart attacks in the UK, which is also covered under most critical illness plans. Someone will suffer from an attack every 2 minutes and there are over 2 million people suffer from heart problems. Once again you will find that in the majority of good critical illness plans heart attacks, depending on severity are covered.

Along side cancer and heart problems strokes are another huge problem in the UK. On average 2 people will suffer from a stroke every 10 minutes in the UK. In the better critical illness plans, strokes are also covered.

Critical illness insurance was created to offer you some protection should one of these terrible situations occur. It will provide a tax free lump sum of money should you suffer from a critical illness that is detailed within the policy you decide to take out. With the odds stacked so highly against us, it is suprising that more people don’t actually have this form of insurance. A recent survey was done and it found that more people actually had pet insurance than a form of critical illness cover.

As with all forms of insurance there are variations of quality within the plans you can take. Although the Association Of British Insurers (ABI) have tightened up rules and regulations recently and made minimum guidelines that have to be adhered to. Having said this, the better plans are the ones that have the ABI definitions as a minimum but expand on these further to offer a very comprehensive plan.

You can decide to take your insurance out in two different forms. You can mirror it to run alongside your mortgage so it will pay off the outstanding amount on your mortgage should you suffer from a critical illness detailed in the plan you take. Or you could also decide to take the insurance on a level or term basis and this is designed to help family should you suffer from a critical illness.

Which ever way you decide to take your insurance, it could be the best decision you ever make.