Early Payout for Critical Illness (let the battle begin!)
Early Payout for critical illness has been becoming more popular since the roll-out of Great Eastern’s plan on this.
The background to this was with the onset of critical illness, policyowners found it difficult to claim given the onerous claim definition and required acceptance of medical evidence by insurer panel of doctors. TODAY ran an article (1 April 09) on this where doctors spoke out on the issue.
A closer look at GE’s Early Payout for CI reveals that it covers different levels of payout according to different severity levels for a list of 20 CIs and one severity level for remaining 10 CIs (therefore a total of 60 medical conditions based on its brochure). However, one must bear in mind that the zero waiting period between claims apply only to claims made across different illnesses or across severity levels of the same illness. For e.g. 1st payout is made for Level 1 (severity level 25) lung cancer, 2nd payout is made for Level 1 heart attack and 2nd payout for cancer will only occur provided it’s for a different organ or a higher severity level for lung cancer. Death benefit is capped at 10,000.
Jumping onto the bandwagon, TM Asialife and AXA Life have launched its own early payout for critical illness plan recently. One important point to note is the TM Asialife plan only covers early payout for Cancer.
In TM Asialife’s CancerCare, the plan will pay up to 5 claims for Level 1 cancer (i.e. malignant growth including cancer in situ requiring treatment). Each claim is 10% of sum assured or up to 30,000. Also, each claim must be for a cancer of a different organ. Once a Level 2 cancer (i.e. malignant uncontrolled growth with invasive and destruction of normal tissue) is diagnosed, the remaining sum assured is fully paid out in one lump sum. Death benefit is 10% of sum assured (max 300k sum assured).
AXA's Early-Payout Living Enhancer works almost similar if not the same as GE's Early Payout plan. There are also 60 medical conditions covered based on segregated severity levels for different critical illnesses. Death benefit is capped at lump sum of 15,000.
Based on respective insurer website info, premium for GE’s Early Payout is 63 per mth (for a 30yr old Male Non-smoker with 100k cover over 30yrs). For similar comparison, CancerCare offers early payout protection at 24.50 per mth. In the case of AXA Early Payout, premium is 53 per mth for 100k sum assured based on 30 year old, non-smoking male for a policy term of 25 years. [Rates not guaranteed, so please approach your own adviser for current rates.]
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