CI Insurance Will See True Market Test
As An Accelerated Life Rider
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Touted as a potentially vibrant new product line for the insurance industry, critical illness insurance is getting a market test.
This is happening right alongside the product that has defined relationships between many agents and clients for yearslife insurance.
As an accelerated rider on a life insurance policy, CI insurance adds an important modern benefit to traditional life insurance and to the product portfolio of life agents. Delivering CI insurance through traditional life insurance channels might also be the most effective way to test the products merits in todays marketplace.
The need for CI insurance is quite clear: Due to medical advances, individuals who suffer serious illnesses recover more frequently to return to their work and lives.
In the past, serious illness more often meant death and the payment of life insurance proceeds to survivors. Today, however, people often survive intense periods of illness, potentially followed by a prolonged recovery time. That means people now need "bridge funding" to help cope with the expenses that may not be covered by disability or medical insurancea solid argument for the benefits provided by CI insurance policies.
Given the strong case for CI insurance, what is the best way to bring it to the public?
Life insurers are beginning to test providing CI insurance as a rider that accelerates the death benefit of a life insurance policy. This is, in part, because the rider benefits fit with the issues and concerns that prompt consumers to consider the purchase of life insurance in the first place.
Protecting mortgage obligations, college expenses and retirement funds are common goals of life insurance protection. But since life insurance pays only in the event of death, a gap in insurance coverage exists for individuals who suffer a major illness and survive but are still not ready or able to return to their career and who may experience significant rehabilitation expenses.
