Life Insurance Ireland

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cancer, Heart Attack and Stroke account for the vast majority of serious illness claims, with 86% of all claims.

The next 10% are primarily accounted by:

• Other Heart related illnesses
• Brain Tumour
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Parkinson's disease

Some of these illnesses are life- style related, others may have their origin in genetics and some occur at random.

Serious illness cover is a small price to pay if you are ever unfortunate enough to be struck down by a serious illness. Many home buyers are watching their money very closely when buying a home and entering a mortgage and for good reason. However a better way to look on serious illness is to put yourself in the position of what would happen if you contracted such an illness.

Having witnessed at first hand what the impact is, I will set out some of the possible scenarios:

• Dramatic loss of Income from perhaps from an incomer of €50,000 or more to a disability benefit of circa €12,000..This could be short, medium or long term.
• Inability to pay the mortgage- possibly being forced to sell your home.
• Unable to return to work on a full time basis
• Medical bills
• Inability to save for your own needs of for family needs

In addition you are facing these difficulties at a time when you need all the help and encouragement available to help fight your illness.

So please, put yourself in the shoes of someone who is getting the bad news today, before deciding not to consider taking out cover.

A small percentage ( approx 3%) of claims are not accepted due to non disclosure by policy holders when completing medical history questions at inception of cover. When completing medical questions as part of an insurance application, it is vital to be totally honest in all your answers and to disclose any information that might be reasonably considered to be relevant. Non disclosure of smoking habits is the most prevalent issue in this area.