Guardian Critical Illness Insurance [REVIEW]

Who Are Guardian?

Many insurers have a long legacy, and Guardian is no exception. They were founded in 1821 and over the past two centuries, they’ve offered many insurance and financial products.

Guardian’s mission is to provide families with clear, comprehensive insurance policies that pay out quickly. They’re all about reliability and providing support when you need it most.

Guardian are by no means the biggest insurance provider, but they’ve established themselves as a top quality insurer. They have picked up multiple awards and earned a 5-star Defaqto rating for their Critical Illness product.

Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Policy Overview

• Fully Comprehensive Cover
  Guardian offers a fully comprehensive policy, paying out in full for 53 conditions, and an additional payment for a further 22 conditions
• Standalone or Combined
  You can choose to have cover for Critical Illness only, or take out a combined Life & Critical Illness policy if you prefer
• Payout on Clinical Diagnosis
  Rather than needing to meet specific definitions of severity, Guardian pays out on the clinical diagnosis of heart attacks, strokes and cancers
• Dual Cover
  Guardian offers Dual Cover for joint policies, protecting each individual. So, instead of only paying out once, you could receive two full claim payouts
• Optional Children’s Cover
  If you have children, you can choose to add them to your policy. They’ll be covered from birth until their 23rd birthday for a cover amount of your choosing (between £10,000 and £100,000)
• Second Medical Opinion & Virtual GP Services
  Free face-to-face consultations for policyholders who want a second medical opinion on a diagnosis or treatment plan. You’ll also get access to a 24/7 digital GP service.

What Does Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Cover?

Guardian offers a very competitive Critical Illness policy, with some unique features that really make it stand out.

For starters, they pay out in full for a whopping 53 conditions—one of the highest amounts out there. They also give you the option to choose the amount of cover you want for your child, and offer some great additional benefits.

There’s a lot of flexibility to enjoy with Guardian’s Critical Illness product, too. We’ve summarised the main coverage points in the below table.

Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Key Policy Factors

When choosing the right Critical Illness provider, there’s a lot to take in. So, we’ve highlighted the key aspects of Guardian’s Critical Illness product below.

Critical Illness Cover For All Cancers

Guardian will pay out at least a partial claim for any cancer diagnosis, regardless of the severity. This even includes low-risk, non-melanoma skin cancer.

Payout On Clinical Diagnosis

All Critical Illness providers have specific definitions for each condition they cover and when they’ll pay out. These definitions are often guided by the Association of British Insurers (ABI). But sometimes, providers will improve on these definitions—giving you better coverage.

The top three most common claims are for heart attacks, strokes, and cancers. To pay out on these, Guardian doesn’t need you to fulfil a specific definition. Instead, they’ll pay out once they have confirmation from a UK consultant.

This means that if you suffer one of the most claimed-for conditions, you’ll have fewer hoops to jump through in order to receive your claim payout.

Surgery Cover

Guardian will also pay part of your claim early if you’re on a UK waitlist for one of the surgeries they cover. The amount of the payment will be the lower of 25% of your benefit, or £50,000.

Once paid, Guardian will subtract the surgery cover claim from your overall benefit. For example, if your total amount of cover was £200,000 and Guardian paid out £50,000 for your surgery, you’d have £150,000 of cover remaining. This cover could then be paid out in full for a future claim.

Total Permanent Disability Cover

With Guardian’s Critical Illness policy, you’ll have Total Permanent Disability cover included as standard. This pays out if you become so totally and irreversibly disabled that you can’t ever perform your own job again.

Cover Upgrade Promise

When Guardian upgrades their definitions, it’s not only new customers that get to take advantage of them. If you claim for a condition which has an improved definition, Guardian will use the improved definition. This gives you a better chance of receiving a claim payout successfully.

Standalone Or Combined

If you have enough Life Insurance in place already, you may only want to take out a policy for Critical Illness. Guardian is one of the providers in the market that offers this option.

You can take out a Critical Illness policy on its own, or separate policies for Life, Critical Illness, and Income Protection under one menu plan. Or, if you do still want Life Protection as well, you can take out a combined Life & Critical Illness policy with Guardian.

Taking out standalone Critical Illness insurance can be risky. If you don’t live past the provider’s survival period, you won’t receive a claim payout at all.

To avoid this, we often recommend a combined Life & Critical policy. That way, if you pass away suddenly from a critical condition like a heart attack, your loved ones will still receive a payout from the life cover.

Alex Weir
Independent Protection Expert

Dual Life Insurance for Couples

When couples take out joint protection with Guardian, they have two single policies under one plan, known as Dual Cover. This differs from other joint plans, where the cover stops after one claim, leaving the remaining partner uninsured.

Guardian’s Dual Cover means that each person can receive their own claim. After one person claims, the other keeps their protection in case they fall unwell or pass away in the future. This option also provides you with a premium discount.

Guaranteed Increase Option

Guardian offers a Guaranteed Insurability Option included in its Critical Illness policy. This lets you increase your cover without any more medical questions after you have certain life events, including:

• Birth or adoption of a child
• Marriage or civil partnership
• Taking out a new mortgage, or increasing your current mortgage
• Getting a pay rise of 20% or more.

The maximum amount you can increase your cover by is the lower of 25% of your original benefit, or £50,000. You can also extend the term of policy when you extend your mortgage, as long as you don’t exceed the maximum cover age.

Increasing Cover Available

Guardian also offers you the option to have increasing cover, known as index-linked cover. Choosing this can protect your benefit from decreasing in value over time due to inflation.

Each year, Guardian will increase your benefit in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) rate of inflation. Some insurers cap index-linked increases at 10% each year, but Guardian doesn’t do this. Although, increases of 10% or more may be subject to underwriting. You can also choose to opt out if you don’t want to accept the increase.

Your cover amount can’t exceed £3 million in total, so if you reach this sum, your cover will switch from Increasing to Level. Guardian will also convert your policy to Level cover if you skip three consecutive increases.

Lifestyle Promise

If you’re accepted for a policy on non-standard terms, you might be able to benefit from Guardian’s Lifestyle Promise. It’s applicable for customers who pay a higher premium due to smoking, an unhealthy body mass index (BMI), or a risky job or higher.

If you make a sustained change to your lifestyle, that reduces your status of being high risk, Guardian promises to review your terms. This could often result in you paying lower premiums after quitting smoking, moving into a healthy weight range, or a change to your work or hobbies.

Guardian Critical Illness Additional Benefits

All providers offer some additional services and benefits to enhance their policies. With Guardian, you don’t only get a comprehensive policy, but you’ll also enjoy some competitive extras, too.

Guardian Anytime

Most of Guardian’s free additional benefits come under Guardian Anytime. Policyholders can benefit from using:

• Unlimited 24/7 Remote GP Service
  Phone or video appointments with a remote GP. There’s no limit to the number of appointments you can have, or a fixed appointment length, so you won’t need to rush through your concerns
• Second Medical Opinion
  If you (or your child, if you’ve added child cover) develop a serious illness, you can ask for a second medical opinion. A specialist will review the diagnosis and treatment options, and offer any alternative options
• Dedicated Nurse Support
  After a serious diagnosis, a dedicated nurse can offer a range of support. They can help you understand your test results and talk you through any treatment procedures, to name a few.

Guardian HALO

For help and advice in a variety of claim-related areas, Guardian’s expert claims management service steps in. This service is known as Guardian HALO, and it can offer:

• A face-to-face second medical opinion
• Return-to-work support
• Finding a solicitor to handle probate
• Bereavement counselling
• Nursing support following diagnosis and treatment
• Estate planning following a terminal illness diagnosis
• Counselling to help families cope with serious illness
• Therapies to ease the consequences of treatments
• Help to draw up a power of attorney
• Speech therapy.

Free Waiver Of Premium Cover

With Guardian’s Critical Illness cover, free Waiver of Premium is automatically included. Guardian steps in to pay your premiums if any of the following apply:

• You can’t do your job due to illness or injury and have been off work for at least 28 consecutive days. Your work absence also means that your regular net income has fallen by at least 25%
• If you’ve involuntarily lost your job or been made redundant, as long as you were in employment on or after the first anniversary of your policy. In this case, Guardian will waive premiums for up to 6 months
• After the first anniversary of your policy if you’re on maternity or paternity leave. Again, Guardian will waive premiums for up to 6 months.

If you can’t do your job due to illness or injury, Guardian will waive your premiums. They’ll do this until you’re either well enough to return to work, you reach retirement, or your policy expires. There’s no limit on the number of times you can use your premium waiver, and it doesn’t impact any claims you might make.

How Does Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Compare?

To help you decide whether Guardian is the best provider for you, it helps to measure them up against the competition. Below, we’ve pointed out some of the key comparison points we think you should consider.

Comprehensive Cover

When it comes to Critical Illness, most providers offer a fairly basic ‘core’ policy, with the option to upgrade to full cover. Guardian doesn’t have two separate policies, though. Instead, their Critical Illness product comes with all the bells and whistles already included.

All Cancers Are Covered

For most Critical Illness claims, you’ll need to meet the insurer’s exact definition in the policy terms. If you don’t meet the severity of that definition, a claim won’t be valid. Because of this, many providers exclude low-grade, low-risk cancers, including many forms of skin cancer.

However, Guardian promises at least some of your benefit for any cancer diagnosis, regardless of its severity. The thought of receiving a cancer diagnosis is a huge concern for most people, so this assurance offers valuable peace of mind.

Improving Critical Illness Definitions

All providers change and improve their Critical Illness definitions over time. In most cases, this is so they can keep up with changes in medical science and healthcare practices.

Having said that, most providers only tend to offer these improved definitions for new applications. Existing policyholders are usually stuck with the definitions that were in place when they took out cover.

Guardian promises policy upgrades to all existing policyholders. This means more individuals will benefit from improved definitions. In turn, this means you’re more likely to have a successful claim when you need it.

Less Medical Evidence Required

Most providers need full medical reports before they’ll agree to pay a claim. Guardian, however, will pay out for cancers, heart attacks and strokes based on evidence from your consultant only. This tends to speed up the claims process, giving you access to the funds more quickly.

Total Permanent Disability Cover As Standard

Many other providers exclude Total Permanent Disability, making it an optional extra that’ll cost you more. With Guardian, it’s automatically included in their full cover.

Optional Child Cover Has Multiple Unique Features

If you do add child cover to your own Critical Illness policy, Guardian’s offers some very competitive coverage. The number of conditions covered and the child death benefit are among the highest in the market.

You also have the option to choose the amount of cover your children have. This can be any amount between £10,000 and £100,000, up to 100% of your own benefit.

Some providers offer free Child Cover when you take out your own policy, but with Guardian, it’s an optional add-on for an extra premium.

If you don’t have children, this means you won’t pay for any cover you won’t need or use. But if you are (or plan to become) a parent, you will need to pay extra to include Child Cover.

Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Protection Expert

Good Package Of Free Additional Benefits

The combination of benefits under Guardian Anytime and Guardian HALO makes for a decent package. It includes a remote GP service, a second medical opinion, and a range of holistic support when you need it most.

14 Day Survival Period

Every insurer has a survival period for Critical Illness claims, meaning you must be alive after this point in order to receive your claim. Many insurers have a 10 day survival period, but with Guardian, it’s 14 days.

Dual Life Cover

When it comes to joint cover, most other providers provide one policy between both people. This means a policy will only pay out once, for the first person to receive a critical diagnosis.

Guardian puts two single policies together under one plan and gives you a premium discount. As a result, the policy covers both lives separately. So, if one partner becomes critically ill, the other one keeps their cover. If both people become critically ill, Guardian will pay out twice: once for each person.

No Claims Statistics

As a result of several mergers and rebrands, Guardian has only been offering Critical Illness under its current brand since 2018. Since then, it hasn’t published its annual claims statistics, including the percentage of successful claims.

These naturally will come with time, but for now it does make Guardian slightly less transparent than other providers in the market.

How Much Does Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Cost?

We know that budget and cost are important factors for most of our clients. So, to give you an idea of how much Guardian might charge for their policy, we’ve run some example quotes.

The figures below show the cost of a combined Life & Critical Illness plan at different ages. They’re based on an individual who:

• Needs £250,000 of decreasing cover
• With a policy term of 25 years
• Works in a low risk, office-based role
• Has no pre-existing conditions
• Is a non-smoker.

As you’d expect, the costs go up a lot with age. Naturally, this is because the risk of falling ill also increases as we grow older.

But remember, these are just examples. Your actual costs will vary based on your age, health and lifestyle, as well as your cover needs.

Guardian is known for its highly comprehensive cover. But as a result, their underwriting can be very thorough, and they may not be the cheapest.

If you have high-risk factors, like smoking, hazardous hobbies, or health concerns, your best bet is to speak with an advisor. We can compare all the top UK providers and get you the best possible terms.

Rauri Taylor
Independent Protection Expert

Compare Guardian Critical Illness Insurance Quotes & Get Expert Advice

Critical Illness can be a complicated financial product. On top of that, each provider has their own attitude towards risk and different definitions of when they’ll pay out. So, having an expert on your side can make all the difference.

Here at Drewberry™, we’re completely independent and impartial. We’ll research the whole market for you and use our negotiating power to find you the best possible cover.

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If you’d like to speak to one of our friendly protection experts, pop us a call on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.

Or, if you know what you’re looking for, you can use our Critical Illness quote tool to compare the costs of all top UK providers.