Declined critical illness claim rates had been falling significantly down the years. One of the reasons may be that people’s awareness has increased concerning certain diseases. Having a visit to the doctor, for example, has become more frequent than before. Better dieting and exercise can be another reason. As a matter of fact, visiting the doctor regularly may have led to nearly any critical illness being discovered prematurely before it becomes lethal. Standard Life, one of UK’s most famous insurance companies had revealed its critical illness claim statistics for the entire year of 2006. Let’s have a look.

Standard Life affirmed that it had paid a total of 360 critical illness claims accounting for around GBP 18.7 million. Furthermore, a decrease in critical illness claim declination rate may have reached around 7.5 percent. Such figures may be encouraging especially to people who have yet to buy a critical illness cover. Also, the average claim value that Standard Life recorded may been around GBP 52,138. Then, the largest amount of critical illness they paid could be approximately GBP 500,000.

Furthermore, around 64 percent of claimants could be aged between 40 and 59 while about 33 percent could be under the age of 39. These figures might be of concern as we may still find quite a large amount of people suffering from critical illness. Additionally, 3 percent of claims could have been made by people over the age of 60. Further figures show that at the time people claimed for their critical illnesses, around 72 percent policies may have been in force since 4 years or more. Finally, 53 percent of critical illness claimants may have been women while the remaining 47 percent could have been men.

In addition to, figures concerning the leading causes for critical illness claims had also been released. As usual, cancer topped the list with around 60 percent of claims followed by heart attack with about 11 percent of critical illness claims. Also, multiple sclerosis recorded 8 percent of claims, stroke 4 percent, benign brain tumour 4 percent and finally other critical illness accounted for around 14 percent of claims. The declination of critical illness claims exist every year. But during the year 2006, the rate of claims turned down had fallen.

Statistics registered figures of only around 7.5 percent of claims rejected during the year 2006. Out of this, about 3.3 percent of claims had been declined as policy definitions were not met. The remaining 4.2 percent could have been declined due to non disclosure. If compared to the year 2005, 18 percent of critical illness claims may have been rejected at that time. 10 percent could have been turned down as policy definitions were not met and 8 percent due to non disclosure. These two causes remain common for many critical illness claims to be rejected.

As seen, there had been a considerable fall in critical illness declination cases of around 10.5 percent in only one year, that is, from 2005 to 2006. Looking at this, one may be encouraged to buy a critical illness. However, to be able to get the best results out of critical illness insurance may mean that a fair amount of shopping and comparison of quotes has to be done.

For more information about life insurance and critical illness insurance please visit www.unbeatablelifeandcriticalinsurance.co.uk.