Zurich Critical Illness Insurance [REVIEW]

Who Are Zurich?

As the name might suggest, Zurich was founded in Switzerland. The company’s history dates back to 1872—more than 150 years ago—and it’s now one of the world’s largest companies.

As a leading multi-line insurer, Zurich provides many kinds of insurance and protection policies. They’re a household name, and you might’ve had car, home, or personal protection insurance with them at some point.

Zurich has won multiple awards for outstanding service and insurance products. In fact, their Critical Illness product has a 5-star Defaqto rating. They’ve also won consecutive Financial Times Adviser awards for their online customer service.

Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Policy Overview

• Core Cover
  Zurich will pay out a full claim on 40 conditions, and up to £25,000 for cancer of the breast or prostate
• Upgrade for Select Cover
  You can upgrade your cover to a Zurich Critical Illness Select policy. This covers 51 full conditions and 48 additional payment conditions for a partial claim
• Optional Children’s Cover
  If you have children younger than 22, you can add them onto your policy. They’ll be covered for the same conditions as you, and more child-specific conditions if you upgrade to Zurich Select
• Standalone or Combined
  You can take out a policy for only Critical Illness Cover, or take out combined Life & Critical Illness if you prefer
• Additional Support Services
  All Zurich policyholders get access to the support services on offer. These aim to offer help in four key areas: daily concerns, significant life events, emotional support and work.

What Does Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Cover?

When you take out a Critical Illness policy with Zurich, you’ll choose between their standard policy and their upgraded Critical Illness Select plan. Although the Select plan costs more, it includes a great deal more cover.

For starters, the Select plan pays additional payments for a staggering 48 conditions. If you claim on one of these conditions, it won’t affect a full claim under your policy later on.

We’ve summarised the main cover points of Zurich’s Critical Illness Cover in the table below.

With the extra coverage on offer, we always discuss comprehensive policies with our clients.

In our experience, the cost difference between basic and comprehensive is usually within around £10 per month. Yet you receive so much more coverage with an upgraded plan.

Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Key Policy Factors

The table above offers a summary of Zurich’s key coverage points. But we think it’s important to have a bit more detail when making such a big decision. Here, we’ve detailed the key features on offer with Zurich’s Critical Illness offering.

Upgrade For Critical Illness Select

When you upgrade to Critical Illness Select, you receive a fully comprehensive policy that Critical Illness Expert (CI Expert) describes as ‘top quality’. Critical Illness Select offers a huge amount more protection, such as a full payout for certain mental health conditions, and an additional payment for 48 conditions.

For example, some of the additional conditions Zurich covers include:

• Diabetes mellitus type 1
• Less advanced cancers, including carcinoma in situ of the breast, prostate and colon
• Skin cancer
• Coronary angioplasty
• Significant loss of vision or hearing
• Bowel diseases (where specified surgery is required), such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis and ulcerative colitis.

These kinds of additional conditions represent some of the more common, but less severe, critical claims. And because they’re more common, the sad truth is that more people will need this extra level of protection in place.

Advanced Payment For Approved Surgeries

If you’re on the NHS waitlist for one of seven approved surgeries (or one of nine with Critical Illness Select), Zurich will pay out your claim early. The approved surgeries include:

• Aorta graft surgery
• Coronary artery bypass graft
• Heart valve replacement or repair
• Major organ transplant
• Pulmonary artery replacement.

Since you’re likely to be off work while awaiting procedures like this, Zurich’s early payout can help you balance your books each month. Without money worries adding to your stress, all you need to focus on is taking care of your health.

Additional Payment For Life-Changing Conditions

If you suffer from a life-changing condition, like deafness or blindness, Zurich makes an extra payment. The additional amount could be up to £100,000, helping you make the necessary living adjustments at a difficult time.

It’s worth noting that this feature is only available on Critical Illness Select, and if you’re aged 50 or under.

Option To Add Child Critical Illness Cover

Zurich doesn’t automatically include Children’s Cover when you take out a Critical Illness policy for yourself. Instead, you can choose to add it on for an extra premium. You’ll have the standard Children’s Benefit unless you upgrade your own cover, in which case you can have the Enhanced Children’s Benefit.

Remember, the Enhanced Children’s Benefit pays out an uplift of up to £50,000 for cancer diagnoses. Not only that, but you’ll also get an uplift of up to £25,000 if your child needs overseas treatment.

Zurich’s Enhanced Children’s Benefit also covers some specific childhood conditions, like cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, cystic fibrosis and spina bifida.

Milestone Benefit

With our lives always changing, having a flexible policy is a must. Zurich offers a Guaranteed Insurability Option known as their Milestone Benefit. This lets you increase your cover amount without any more medical questions within 90 days of major life events, such as:

• Marriage or civil partnership
• Divorce, separation, or dissolution of a civil partnership
• Childbirth or legal adoption of a child
• Increasing your mortgage due to buying a new home, moving house or making home improvements
• An increase of 10% or more in your earnings following a change in employment or a promotion.

The maximum amount you can increase your policy by is either £200,000, or your original benefit—whichever is lower. But, the limits for a mortgage increase or salary increase work a little differently.

For a mortgage increase, Zurich limits your increase to the total amount outstanding mortgage on your main home. And with a salary uplift, you can only increase your benefit by the same percentage your salary has risen by.

Separation Benefit

Sadly, some couples do decide to go their separate ways. If this happens while you’re covered under a joint plan, Zurich lets you separate your joint policy into two single ones. And again, you won’t need to give them any more medical evidence.

Both people need to agree to split the cover in this way. You’ll have 90 days from the date of the separation event to use this option.

Indexed Cover Available

Zurich gives you the option of taking out increasing—or index-linked—cover. This sees your cover amount rise each year, so that inflation doesn’t decrease the value of your benefit later on. There are two ways for your cover to go up:

• Fixed Increasing Cover
  At the beginning of the policy, you’ll decide for your benefit to go up by either 3% or 5% each year. And, to cover the increase in cover, your premiums will also go up, by either 4.5% or 6.5% respectively
• Indexed Increasing Cover
  Your cover amount rises in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) rate of inflation. But, it won’t go up by more than 10% each year. Your premiums will also increase, by 1.5% for every 1% increase in your cover.

It’s important to remember that for Critical Illness Cover, your benefit can’t go up by more than £5 million in total. Or, if you have Total Permanent Disability cover, the upper limit is £2 million.

Zurich Critical Illness Additional Benefits

These days, all providers offer ‘value-added’ services to enhance their offering. So, with Zurich, you won’t just get a comprehensive policy, you’ll also enjoy some extra benefits.

Zurich Support Services

The main suite of benefits you’ll get comes under Zurich Support Services. Essentially, this is a 24/7 helpline that offers support for a variety of life events. The service is split into four key areas, offering help with:

• Daily Concerns
  This covers things like your job search, debt management, covering household bills, and consumer rights
• Significant Life Events
  Support in this area could be help with wedding planning, coping with a separation, divorce or bereavement, or moving home
• Emotional Support
  If and when you need it, you can get assistance with mental health issues. This could be anxiety, depression, living with an illness or disability, or even revisiting your life goals
• Work
  Lastly, you can seek out help to deal with work-related pressure or stress, workplace bullying or harassment, and your employment rights.

All the services are free to use and confidential. The specialists you speak with can also point you in the direction of other helpful resources moving forwards.

Conversion Option

If you take out a combined Life & Critical Illness policy, you can convert part, or all, of your cover to a whole-of-life policy. You need to do this before the policy ends and your premiums will go up as a result of the adjustment. To include the conversion option, you’ll need to decide when you first take out your policy.

Renewal Option

You can also add a renewal option when your policy starts. This means that you can extend your policy at the end of the term. Renewing your policy creates a new plan, but carries over all the additional benefits and features of your original policy.

Your policy’s new term will either be the same as your original plan, or until you reach the age limits for this kind of cover. With Critical Illness, Zurich caps this option at age 70, and you can’t be older than 75 when your new policy will end.

If you take up this option, Zurich won’t ask you any further health questions, but your premiums might still go up.

Like all other providers, Zurich lets you pick and choose which paid benefits you might like.

We recommend thinking about how likely you are to need them and what kind of budget you’re working with.

Ben Brooks
Independent Protection Expert

Multi Fracture Cover (Additional Cost)

You can choose to add Multi Fracture Cover to your policy for an extra cost to your monthly premiums. Zurich’s fracture cover pays out either £2,000, £4,000, or £6,000 depending on the severity of your injury.

Even though it’s called Multi Fracture Cover, it actually covers a lot more than just fractures, such as:

• Certain dislocations approved by Zurich
• Ruptures to your Achilles tendon
• Tears in the cruciate ligament in your knee.

You can claim multiple times each year, but Zurich won’t pay out more than £6,000 in each policy year.

There are some exclusions for injuries if they’re gained during activities which Zurich considers dangerous. So, if your injury is a result of BMX or mountain biking, boxing, martial arts, cage fighting, or rugby, it won’t be covered.

Total Permanent Disability (Additional Cost)

As you may already know, all Critical Illness policies typically offer Total Permanent Disability. It’s just a question of how each provider includes it in their policy.

With Zurich, you can choose to add on Total Permanent Disability (TPD) at an extra cost. If you choose this, Zurich will confirm which definition they’ll use:

• Own Occupation
  You can claim if you’re completely unable to work in your own job ever again
• Work Tasks
  You’re considered totally and permanently disabled if you’re unable to do at least three of six work tasks ever again. These include walking, lifting, and climbing a flight of stairs unaided.

Waiver Of Premium (Additional Cost)

When you first take out your policy, you can add on Waiver of Premium cover for an extra cost to your premium. With this, Zurich waives your policy premiums if you’re unable to work due to sickness or incapacity.

Zurich uses a fixed deferred period of six months. So, if you’re signed off work after six months, the premium waiver will start. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re claiming on your Critical Illness policy.

How Does Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Compare?

To decide whether Zurich is the right provider for you, it helps to see where they stand among their competitors. We’ve dug into some of the most important comparison points we think you should know.

Minimum Entry Age Of 16

Most personal protection providers only offer cover to people aged 18 or over. But with Zurich, you can take out Life & Critical Illness at the age of 16. This is the youngest minimum age on the market, which makes Zurich a good option for young people.

Children’s Cover Not Included As Standard

Where some providers include it for free, Children’s Cover with Zurich is an optional add-on. Now, this could be a preference for child-free people who don’t wish to pay extra. But, if you have children or plan to add children to your family, it’s worth noting that this’ll cost extra.

Pregnancy Complications Cost Extra

If you take out a standard policy with their standard Children’s Benefit, you won’t be covered for stillbirth or foetal death in utero. To get these benefits, you’ll need to upgrade to Critical Illness Select and take out the Enhanced Children’s Benefit. Then, you’ll be covered for a payout of £5,000 from the 24th week of your pregnancy.

Having said that, Zurich’s Enhanced Children’s benefit also offers coverage for all the adult conditions, and several child-specific conditions. They’ll pay a benefit uplift if your child is diagnosed with cancer, or if they need international treatment.

Minimal Free Additional Benefits

Zurich Support Services offers a fairly minimal range of benefits. While you can receive help and counselling for many life issues, there are other insurers that provide more attractive extras. For example, there are more tangible benefits on the market, like health check-ups, a digital GP service, and physiotherapy.

Top Quality Cover

We understand that Zurich’s highest form of coverage costs extra, and that it may not make them the cheapest. On top of that, most of our clients work within a certain budget, and cost is an important factor when making a decision.

That being said, when you do upgrade your cover, you get some of the highest coverage on the market. With Zurich’s Critical Illness Select, you’re covered for a total of 51 full-claim conditions and 48 additional-payment conditions. This means they cover more conditions than most other providers on the market.

Zurich also pays out early for certain surgeries. If you’re on an NHS waitlist for a range of heart surgeries or a major organ transplant, you’ll receive an advanced claim.

You can also receive an additional payment of up to £100,000 if you suffer from a life-changing condition. No other provider currently offers this as a feature.

Often, it’s cheaper to take out a standard policy, however we believe an enhanced policy is always worth the extra cost.

We know that everyone has a certain budget though, which is why we research the whole market to find our clients the best terms at the best possible price.

Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Protection Expert

Multi Fracture Cover Option

There are only a few insurers which offer some form of Fracture Cover as an additional benefit for Critical Illness. It’s typically more suited to Income Protection policies.

Fracture cover will always cost you a little more to include. But with Zurich, you’re covered for certain dislocations, ruptured tendons and cruciate ligament tears, too. This makes their benefit unique among the other fracture cover benefits on the market.

Total Permanent Disability Cover Not Included As Standard

Total Permanent Disability cover is usually one of the conditions covered by Critical Illness insurance. It pays out if you become completely and permanently disabled through illness or injury. You’ll either be unable to work again, or unable to live independently.

It’s not one of the conditions Zurich includes as standard, though. Instead, you can pay extra to include it in your policy. It’s worth noting that there are some providers that include this as a standard condition.

Waiver Of Premium Not Included As Standard

Similarly, some providers include a premium waiver in their cover as standard. However, with Zurich, this will also cost extra to add on. If you do add it, you aren’t able to choose a deferred period that suits you.

Zurich has a standard deferred period of six months. This means if you’re unable to work due to sickness or incapacity, Zurich will start paying your premiums, but only after you have been off for 6 months.

Lower Claims Statistics

For a Critical Illness provider, you’d want their claim payout rate to be somewhere in the 90% and above range. However, according to Zurich’s claims statistics, their claim payout rate for Critical Illness was 87% in 2020.

While this might seem lower than other providers, it’s important to remember that each insurer qualifies claims differently. Some don’t count fraudulent claims towards their statistics, but others—like Zurich—do.

It’s important to bear in mind that a good deal of the 13% of unpaid claims will be a result of non-disclosure. In other words, these are people who had symptoms at the time of applying, but didn’t let Zurich know. Sometimes this is an honest mistake, but there will be cases of insurance fraud, too.

How Much Does Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Cost?

As we mentioned before, most of our clients have a certain budget in mind for their cover. So, to give you an idea of how much a Zurich policy might set you back, we’ve provided some examples below.

The figures show the cost of a combined Life & Critical Illness policy at various ages. The examples are based on a person who:

• Needs £250,000 of decreasing cover, linked to their mortgage
• Also needs a policy term of 25 years
• Is in a low risk, office-based role
• Has no pre-existing conditions
• Is a non-smoker.

As you’d expect, the monthly premiums significantly increase with age. This is because the risks of us falling ill also increase as we grow older.

These are just examples, though, and your actual costs could be quite different. It depends on your age, health status and lifestyle, as well as your cover choices.

It’s not just cost that’s a factor, but coverage, too. Many of our clients worry about certain scenarios, like hereditary cancers.

In these cases, we’ll compare the best policies and extra benefits to find you the most suitable options for your needs.

Georgia Meyer
Independent Protection Expert

Compare Zurich Critical Illness Insurance Quotes & Get Expert Advice

There’s a lot to consider when taking out Critical Illness insurance. And Zurich is one of many competitive providers on the market. Each insurer has their own approach to risk and different definitions of certain conditions. So, having an expert on your side can make all the difference.

Our experts are completely independent and impartial. This means we’ll research the whole of the Critical Illness market for you and make a recommendation to suit your personal needs.

Not only that, but we’ll handle any potential complications on your behalf. If you’ve had previous ill health or take part in hazardous sports, we can use our negotiating power to find you the best possible cover.

Why Speak to Us?

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We all deserve a first class service when it comes to issues as important as protecting our health and our finances. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.

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

Alternatively, if you’re confident you know what you are looking for, you can use our Critical Illness quote tool. This can help you compare the cost across the top UK providers.