CuraVision - FAQs - Huntington's Disease

CuraVision FAQs Huntington’s Disease – Video Transcript

Hi, today I want to chat to you about some common questions that I’m getting in regards to Huntington’s disease and protection insurances.

I’ve got quite a few people coming to me at the moment saying I’ve got a family member who has Huntington’s disease and I would like, can I get critical illness cover, and will it pay out if I develop Huntington’s disease myself? It’s quite a tricky one to answer, so I’ll try and do it as best as I can.

So Huntington’s disease in itself isn’t listed as a claimable condition on critical illness contracts. So generally, no, a critical illness contract will not pay out if you’re diagnosed with Huntington’s disease because it’s not listed. Things like cancer, heart attack and stroke are the things that are listed on there, and as well as another probably about another 60-odd conditions or something.

But there is an aspect of critical illness contracts called total permanent disability. Now, that will pay out, and that sort of like encompasses any kind of condition that really affects your ability to live or to work. There’s a few different definitions, so be careful as to which definition you get of that.

Now, with that, it is potential that you may be able to claim on that. It’s very difficult to claim on total permanent disability. This doesn’t have a fantastic track record, in all fairness, of successful payouts on that. But if you already have a family member with Huntington’s disease, it is potential that you wouldn’t be allowed to have the total permanent disability on the policy.

But don’t worry because that was within the personal markets.

There is the potential that we could look at things known as group insurance. That is arranged by employers or if you have your own company, it can be arranged in your own company, and there has to be at least, generally, at least two people on the payroll, better if it’s three or five people that are on the payroll.

And then the insurer can arrange the life insurance, critical illness cover or income protection on the company as a whole, and that then means that there is a certain amount of cover that you can access that doesn’t have any medical underwriting. So that’d be your own health and your family’s health wouldn’t come into play in regards to that.

So a little bit more complicated setup. Not everybody does things like group insurance, so I recommend that you do speak to a qualified advisor or get your employer to speak to a recognized advisor so that they can point you in the right direction with those because there’s just lots of little finicky bits in the background for people to arrange with that.