Cover starts from just £5 a month, and LV= says that it paid 95% of life insurance claims in 2018.
Critical illness cover is only available if you also have a life insurance policy.The insurer formerly known as Liverpool Victoria started out in 1843 as a burial society, whereby participants’ voluntary subscriptions were used to help pay for the funeral costs of members and their families. Now one of the UK’s biggest insurers, LV= may be better known for its car insurance, but still harks back to its original roots with its range of life insurance products.
LV’s core product is its term life insurance, which pays out a lump sum to help pay the mortgage and other expenses if you die or get diagnosed with a terminal illness. You can add critical illness cover onto this to receive a payout if you become seriously, rather than terminally, ill.
As the name suggests, term life insurance only covers you for a specified timeframe, so it’s not as pricey as whole of life insurance. It can be a good choice if, say, you want to provide a safety net for your little ones while they’re little, but don’t want to be left forking out for cover once they’ve flown the nest (and are hopefully earning enough to look after you in your dotage – sorry, we mean “golden years”).
LV= offers three types of term life insurance:
While some insurers offer standalone critical illness cover, LV’s is only available in combination with its core life insurance policy. You can opt for level-term, inflation-linked or decreasing cover.
The critical illness add-on offers a lump sum if you’re diagnosed with one of more than 60 illnesses. For around two-thirds of these, LV= pays out the full amount, after which cover ends. The rest it dubs “additional payment” conditions – if you’re diagnosed with one of these less serious conditions, it’ll typically pay out between £12,500 and £25,000 (or a proportion of your cover, depending on which is lower), and you’ll retain your full level of cover.
With combined policies, if you choose the same level of cover for both life insurance and critical illness, you’ll only receive a payout for the first claim (so if you make a critical illness claim, you will no longer have life insurance cover). You can also choose a higher level of cover for life insurance, in which case if you claim for critical illness, you’ll still have some life insurance cover.
The specific exclusions will depend on which type of cover you take out, so you’ll need to check the policy documents carefully, but some key exclusions are:
You (or someone claiming on your behalf) can:
You can help make an unpleasant task go as smoothly as possible by having important information to hand, including the policy number and either medical reports from a doctor or an original death certificate, depending on what you’re claiming for.
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