4 things about critical illness definitions in Singapore

Critical illness insurance plays an important role in providing a financial safeguard for you and your loved ones. In the event you are diagnosed with a critical illness, you will receive a lump sum payout from the policy.

This payout is typically meant to tide you through daily living expenses during your recovery, at a time when you may not be able to work and earn a salary, as well as give you additional options to seek medical treatments or complementary therapy.

Such lump sum payouts enable you to protect your and your loved ones’ way of life without eating into savings and investments earmarked for other important expenses.

For those purchasing critical illness insurance from 26 August 2020 onwards, you will be looking at an updated set of definitions for the standard list of 37 critical illnesses. This was announced by the Life Insurance Association (LIA) on 29 August 2019, under its Critical Illness Framework 2019.

Here are four things you should understand about the changes contained within LIA’s Critical Illness Framework 2019.

Under the new Critical Illness Framework 2019, definitions of 21 critical illnesses were revised, while the names of 14 critical illnesses were enhanced to better reflect the intent of the coverage.

Here’s the list of changes to the standard list of 37 critical illness under the Critical Illness Framework 2019:

You can examine the details of each of the 37 critical illnesses on the Critical Illness Framework 2019, comparing to the 2014 version, on LIA’s website.

Standardised Critical Illness definitions provides greater transparency for consumers to assess and compare different insurance plans.

It also reduces discrepancies in claim assessments, where one insurer may provide a payout while another rejects a payout. This way, consumers can rest assured that claims assessment will be similar regardless of their chosen insurer.

Nevertheless, insurers can continue to set their products apart by extending coverage for more medical conditions and stages of illness progression, beyond the standard list of 37 critical illnesses, so you still need to fully understand the full benefits of any critical illness insurance you are purchasing.

For example, plans such as AIA Absolute Critical Cover (ASCC) offers wide coverage for 187 conditions that go beyond critical illnesses, including 150 multi-stage critical illnesses.

While the majority of changes made was to provide clarity to the definitions of coverage to severe stages, some changes led to expanded benefits for the insured. This includes:

• Allowing claims under “HIV Due to Blood Transfusion and Occupationally Acquired HIV” for those who suffer from Thalassaemia or Haemophillia to be fair to the group, as these groups were previously denied claim.

• Adjusting the “Blindness (Irreversible Lost of Sight)” condition to the legal definition of blindness of 6/60, from previously 3/60