I increased term + critical illness coverage further with Manulife Skip to main content

I increased term + critical illness coverage further with Manulife

I recently increased my term and critical illness coverage by another $1M and $300k respectively.

I checked around with many providers and ended up with Manulife as it's what I need, without all the bells and whistles. AIA offered total coverage for recurrent illnesses, but I figure if I get the same cancer twice, I'd probably be dead by then. So there's no need to pay a premium for that type of policy. Sometimes plain vanilla is the best.
I also considered disability insurance where they pay you an amount on a monthly basis. While this sounds like a great idea, the insurers will make it difficult for you to claim this, with strange delay clauses and exclusions. It's much cleaner to receive a large lump sum payment and manage it from there.

Why these figures for critical illness? I based it on annual family expenses. Most insurance agents will tell you like 5-10x of your salary, just to get you to buy a bigger policy. An agent that looks out for you will tell you to look at it from an expenses point of view (my agent is a good agent). For example if my annual family expenditure is $100k, then this policy takes care of 3yrs of no pay leave or me not working.

On the term portion, the premium delta between $500k and $1M was $400/yr and it was pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things, so I opted for the higher figure.

Disregarding the SAF group policy, since that's a group term one, I have about $1.4M coverage for death and tpd, $720k for CI of which $150k is ECI. I think this is sufficient for the rest of my working life. I plan for most of the insurance coverage to end by age 65 anyway, as I plan to be financially free and dependant free by then. The integrated shield plans will be enough to cover my medical bills from then onwards.
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