Critical Illness and Long Term Disability

October 3rd I reported about Royal London Insurance adding Kennedy's Disease to their list of Critical Illness Coverage. I felt this was an important step and hoped other companies would follow in their footsteps.

This afternoon I read a nicely written piece on Royal London's goal of improving and simplifying the definitions of critical illnesses. Once again I applaud their efforts to improve the experience of customers shopping for this coverage.

You can read the entire article by following this link in Money Marketing: Enhance Simplicity.

Here is an excerpt of the article.

"Fortunately, things are improving with providers recognising the need to create simpler definitions. Earlier this month, we announced enhancements to our critical illness cover. The main change is to cancer cover; over 60 early stage cancers are now covered under nine definitions. By removing a long list of specified cancers, these changes provide clarity for advisers and customers and will result in more claims being paid.

In addition, our new Parkinson's definition now includes Parkinson's-plus syndromes that incorporate multiple system atrophy and progressive supranuclear palsy. Our motor neurone disease definition has been updated to include Kennedy’s disease, making the definition ABI+.

We could have listed numerous in situ cancers and shown Kennedy’s disease and the five Parkinson's-plus syndromes as stand-alone conditions but we didn’t want to play the numbers game."

On a personal note: Thirty years ago I took out disability insurance coverage while hoping I would never need it. Seventeen years later I was forced to go on long term disability. We were so thankful we had the coverage. It made making the difficult decision much more palatable.