Amber has been part of our team for nearly a year now, studying for an apprenticeship while she is with us. She’s written up her personal experience of why Critical Illness Cover should be more than just a ‘sale’:
The statistics for critical illnesses make me wonder why people hesitate to cover themselves.
In the UK alone: somebody has a stroke every 5 minutes, there is a cancer diagnosis every 2 minutes and on average 170 people per day have a heart attack
When putting any protection in place you need to consider everything, including the chance of getting more uncommon illnesses. One of those being Motor Neurone Disease. On average there are 5,000 people suffering with MND at one given time. 1,100 diagnoses of MND are given each year and last year one of those diagnoses were given to my dad.
At the time of his diagnosis, I hadn’t even turned 18 yet. I was none the wiser to what Motor Neurone Disease was, let alone any critical illness cover he did or didn’t have. Not that he would’ve discussed such things with his 17-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, it was the case that he didn’t have critical illness cover.
He was left unable to work so he had no source of income. Although he has worked his whole life when he finally needed help from the benefit system, it has failed to help him with enough funds to make what’s left of his life comfortable in terms of the machines and what he needs. Due to Covid-19 we couldn’t host any events or do much ‘in person’ fundraising, so we had to do it all online. Luckily, we have a big family, and my dad has made such a positive impact on many people’s lives which enabled us to raise an astronomical amount for him.
We had multiples raffles set up, we had an auction (this raised £5,000 alone). One of the raffles was set up by me, I was doing some reselling and did a little tuckshop for when we were allowed friends round in the garden as well as doing my own little fundraiser on Facebook which got just over £1,000. I approached a few local newspaper places who used dad’s story to try and get some extra donations. I contacted hundreds of influencers who also shared his fundraiser which, in the end, got £19,697 from the 415 people who kindly donated.
The point I’m trying to make here is that not everyone is in the position to fundraise that amount of money. Although it’s more than we could have dreamed for, unfortunately it’s still far from what is needed in terms of maintaining my dad’s standards of living and funding the machines needed for his rapidly increasing deterioration.
I think the problem is, it’s so difficult for people to rationalise spending their hard-earned money on an insurance you don’t think or at least hope not to ever need. You would be wrong to think that you don’t need cover because you don’t think something like this would happen to you. My dad was only 48 when he got diagnosed as well as being very active and healthy. Critical illnesses don’t only target the unhealthy ones which is why you need to be passionate about covering yourself and your clients.
Dads’ fundraiser ‘expired’ last year, at Acclaimed Mortgage Consultancy we have decided to go ahead and do some more fundraising over the next few months. If you wanted to take a look and read the full story, here is the link: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/amber-gerard
