The practice has been involved in a flurry of claims on critical illness, terminal illness and income protection.

This can be very sad, but it is good to be able to help people in these situations.

Also, from a professional perspective it’s been interesting on two fronts.

Firstly, so far, the claims have all been paid by the insurance companies – this flies in the face of ‘popular opinion’ and is very good news for our customers but also very reassuring for us, it is easy to develop self doubt when offering these products.

Secondly, the thing that I have noticed is that some of the claimants are younger than me – and I’m only 41 – which reminds me how often young people decline to take recommended insurances becuase they feel immortal. I say that without making judgement – I did exactly the same

Separately, I had a visit from the Prudential this week – they have tweaked the small print on their Serious Illness Policy – and now it is a Seriously Good Policy (hmmm, maybe I should be in marketing…). It is like a critical illness policy, but there are illnesses that are serious, but not critical. In fact, I can break this down into numbers.

All the mainstream critical illness policies cover between 30 and 39 illnesses. The serious illness policy covers up to 135.

Examples? – Prostate Cancer – serious, but not critical. Diabetes – serious but not critical (BUPA cover one form of diabetes in their policy, but it’s the rare type)

If this tweaks your interest, give me a call. 01489784022 or e-mail me – adrian@adriangarside.co.uk