Mostly, when insurance companies tweak their definitions of illnesses, the differences are more technical than genuinely useful.

This is different.

Breast Cancer has by far the highest number of claims in the world of critical illness policies – the definition is usually along the lines of having malignant cells – here is a typical definition I’ve just cut from a brochure – “Any malignant tumour positively diagnosed with histological confirmation and characterised by the uncontrolled growth of malignant cells and invasion of tissue.”

That’s quite a high qualification level, and is pretty standard across all companies.

The news that has caused a ripple in my pond is this: Prudential have just added even more illnesses to their list that qualify for a payout and they have included Lumpectomy in their ‘proportional payout’ range.

So, any woman having a lumpectomy qualifies for a 10% payout on their critical illness cover.

Anybody thinking about buying a critical illness policy needs to look beyond the premium and give thought to the quality of cover they wish to take – for some clients the Pru are very cheap, but they are not always cheapest. It is very easy to see a league table of premiums and think all policies are the same so take the cheapest.

For me, the Prudential are very different, so for clients we need to consider the cheapest policy, but we also need to consider the premium with the Prudential and also the premium with Bright Grey who have some unique features to their policy as well.