Beagle Street Critical Illness
Beagle Street has improved the coverage under its online Critical Illness plans. The key changes are:
Heart attack. The requirement for a specific level or raised enzymes has been dropped.
Stroke. The requirement for permanent neurological deficit has been dropped. Instead, symptoms must last at least 24 hours and there must be evidence of death of brain tissue or haemorrhage.
Carcinoma in situ of the breast has been added.
Coronary angioplasty has been added. Payment is dependent on two or more coronary arteries being blocked to the extent of 70% diameter.
Early stage prostate cancer has been added.
Severe Crohn’s disease has been added.
Ulcerative colitis has been added.
For just £10 a month a customer age 35 accepted at standard rates could get £187,169 of life cover or £18,717 of critical illness cover. Maximum cover varies from £750K up to age 39 to $75K at ages 60-64. It can take just ten minutes to get cover Beagle Street says. It offers CI cover combined with life cover and additional critical illness cover.
Comment: This month (September 2014) has seen a plethora of CI updates as insurers compete to offer the best cover. Beagle Street quietly introduced its updated cover (CI Expert’s Alan Lakey revealed the changes to the media on 17 September) and this widens its cover but the bottom line on all CI plans is that if you have what you and your medical advisers believe is a critical illness that severely affects your life or life expectancy, you will expect a payout but you may have to wade through pages of complex medico-legal definitions to know if what you have is covered. There must be a better way…
Until a better way of defining a critical illness is developed, we welcome these changes as any widening of cover must (assuming the price is right) benefit those unlucky enough to get a condition now covered.
Plus points: Wider cover available to buy easily and inexpensively online; Customers can get cover within ten minutes.
Not so plus points: A CI is getting ever more complex and customers will have little idea of what is or should be covered and many IFAs will struggle too unless they use a good third party comparison system.
Website: http://www.beaglestreet.com.
Rating (max 10): Innovation: 7. Overall: 8. Gold
Tags: Beagle Street; CI