Is disability included as part of Critical Illness Cover?

Many critical illness insurance plans now include something called total and permanent disability (TPD for short).

These are defined as illnesses and medical conditions where there is no long-term prospect of recovery and where the insured is totally disabled.

The difficulty lies in defining "total and permanent" disability because different providers use different criteria.

But as a general rule of thumb, providers usually assess a claim on the insured person's inability to perform tasks like the following:

• their own job (own occupation)
• similar jobs to their own or those they are trained or qualified to do (suited occupation)
• any job (any occupation) - a lawyer would not be able to claim if he or she was able to work as a car park attendant
• specified 'work activities' or 'activities of daily living' as tested by 'living' or 'functional ability' tests

Because of these definitions, changing your job might mean you have to at least tell your provider to ensure it remains valid.

To make sure the customer gets what they want many providers allow a choice of cover. This ranges from a limited number of conditions, (which is usually cheaper), to much more comprehensive packages.

The cost of putting 'comprehensive cover' including TPD will not necessarily be prohibitively more expensive than 'basic' cover.

To research your critical illness position further you can use our exclusive interactive research tool, the critical illness finance navigator.

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