Ageas health insurance review

AGEAS UK is a part of AGEAS Group that is an international provider of life and non-life insurance products for more than 8000000 customers worldwide. AGEAS Group is headquartered in Netherlands and Belgium and operates in 14 countries worldwide. AGEAS UK is one of the biggest branches in AGEAS Group that hires about 6000 employers. AGEAS Group is the sixth largest insurance company in UK offering non-life health insurance products. The company provides services to both individuals and small commercial companies through brokers, affinities and intermediaries. What is more, a person can review the quotes of most products offered by the company online. The company does not specialize in health insurance but offers some benefits attached to its life insurance products that can help policyholders to cover their medical bills.

Critical illness insurance

Critical illness insurance offered by AGEAS gives policyholder a right to get a lump sum payment in case of a serious illness. In order to get the payment the definition of an illness has to meet the definition used by the company: seriousness, consequences on health, stage of an illness and other factors are taken into consideration and are included in the policy. Sometimes the list of critical illnesses can vary from person to person. For some people a certain illness can be excluded from a list if that person had health problems that could lead to increased risk for the insurance company. The list originally includes 39 illnesses: cancer, blindness, brain tumor, deafness and HIV infections. What is more, a person can ask the insurance provider to include extra benefits in the cover: Waiver of Premium, Total Disability and Total Permanent Disability. Waiver of Premiums means that the insurance company agrees to waive the premiums for the person if the insurance holder is incapacitated for more than 26 weeks. The premiums will be waived until the insured person no longer is incapacitated, dies or the cover ends. While the company waives the premiums, a policyholder can be asked to visit a doctor in order to prove the seriousness of his medical condition. Total permanent disability benefit gives the insurance holder a right to get a lump sum payment in case he is diagnosed with a permanent disease whereas total disability cover is valid for non-permanent diseases.

Income protection benefit

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Income protection benefit gives a policyholder a right to get a lump sum payment in case a person cannot work for longer than the deferred period. The deferred period starts when a person becomes incapacitated and ends when the insurance company starts making payments. AGEAS UK offer customers 5 different deferred periods: 4, 8, 13, 26 and 52 weeks. The person has to meet the definition of incapacitated and has to be diagnosed with a critical illness from a list published by the insurance company or has to leave full-time job in order to take care of children that became incapacitated. Besides, the company promises to pay for services that could help incapacitated person to improve his health and come back to work sooner.

AGEAS UK uses 3 different ways to determine whether the person is incapacitated: own occupation, suited occupation and daily activities. Own occupation method means that the person is considered incapacitated if he is unable to continue in a job he had before he became sick. Suited occupation method means that the person becomes incapacitated when he is unable to continue in any kind of job that is suitable to him according to education or professional experience. Daily activity method proves that the person is incapacitated when he is unable to do things he used to do every day: eat, go to the supermarket or brush hair. When it comes to defining whether the child is incapacitated, the company uses a little different approach. The child is considered to be incapacitated if he needs full-time care because of an illness that is supposed to last more than 12 months.

The amount a person gets from the insurer each month is equal to monthly premiums or is based on the size of monthly premiums. Company can make level monthly premiums and increasing monthly premiums. If a person chooses level monthly premiums he gets the same amount of money every month. Policyholders that have chosen increasing monthly premiums get higher premiums every year of the contract. In the first year the person gets level monthly premiums. Each following year the premiums are increased by Retail Price Index that cannot be higher than 10 %. This happens on the anniversary of when the cover started. The insurance company contacts the person and informs him about the changes in this policy. If Retail Price Index increased by more than 10%, the premiums will increase only by 10%. The company uses the maximum limit in order to control the risk.