AIG Critical Illness Insurance Cover Review 2025

Worried about paying bills if illness stops you from working? AIG Critical Illness Insurance paid out 98% of claims in 2024, helping thousands ease financial stress when health declined.

We’ll explain what AIG critical illness cover includes, extra benefits like children’s protection and Smart Health support, and how to find the right plan for your needs.

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Who Are AIG?

AIG Life Limited is a trusted insurance provider operating across the UK. It is part of the American International Group (AIG), which began in 1919. AIG now serves millions globally, providing support in over 80 countries and regions.

This makes them Europe’s largest US-based life insurance group.

The company offers a range of products, including life insurance and critical illness cover, helping countless people manage their mortgage payments or healthcare costs during challenging times.

AIG has clear policies regarding claims handling, supported by professional health services and regulated by bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Overview of AIG Critical Illness Insurance

AIG Critical Illness Insurance provides transparent and flexible policies that can fit your life. The cover offers valuable benefits, designed to protect you if a serious illness strikes.

Policy structure and flexibility

AIG offers clear and simple policy options that match your needs. Choices include Level Term Insurance, Decreasing Term Insurance, and Increasing Term Insurance, which is linked to inflation.

Customers aged between 17 and 75 years old can apply. The cover lasts from 3 to 50 years, ending before the policyholder’s 86th birthday.

You select how premiums are set: guaranteed (fixed), reviewable (which may change after checks by insurers), or annually escalating (increasing each year).

Your plan can also have an optional waiver of premium benefit. This means if a sudden illness like cardiac problems, heart failure or lung disease stops you working for over 26 weeks, the payments stop until you’re fit again.

People with pre-existing conditions such as epilepsy, hypertension or depression may need further underwriting checks during application.

The flexible policy helps make sure a critical insurance claim will support you financially through tough times without causing stress about premiums rising sharply later on.

Key features of the cover

The policy needs you to survive at least 10 days after diagnosis for an AIG critical illness payout.

For significant changes like marriage, having a baby or buying a home, the guaranteed insurability option lets you raise your cover easily without new medical checks.

Joint policies include separation benefits; after divorce or separation, couples can split their joint cover into two individual policies within six months.

Flexible options that fit around life events make this insurance both practical and valuable.

What Does AIG Critical Illness Insurance Cover?

AIG Critical Illness Insurance provides comprehensive coverage for serious health issues, organised clearly to help you understand what’s included.

You can also add extra protection, for example, children’s cover or support during key life events.

Grouped conditions

Illnesses can come in many forms and levels of severity. AIG groups conditions clearly, making it easy for you to understand your policy cover:

• Under the Core Policy, you receive full payouts for 23 key health conditions, with additional payouts for two more illnesses. Serious issues, such as cardiomyopathy or cerebral arteriovenous malformation, would trigger complete claims.
• Enhanced Policy widens your cover, giving full payments for up to 30 critical illnesses and partial payouts on another 20 less severe conditions; these include treatments like intestinal resections or cystectomy.
• You can choose AIG’s simpler Key3 Critical Illness Product, which covers only cancer, heart attacks, and strokes. This is ideal if these are the primary concerns in your family’s medical history or daily lifestyle.
• Conditions grouped by type make your policy clear; this method helps you quickly spot coverage for rare but life-changing ailments such as aneurysms or ataxias.
• Health concerns around children matter too, so optional children’s cover takes care of birth defects such as a cleft lip or cleft palate; severe genetic disorders like Rett syndrome also qualify here.
• Traumatic events causing hypoxia or anoxia fall into specific groups, ensuring clarity over potentially confusing medical terms.
• Surgeries like endovascular surgery or procedures involving the aorta are clearly linked to relevant condition groups, guiding you through claims smoothly during stressful times.
• Emotional support surrounding difficult situations such as foetal death or bereavement forms part of the broader grouping approach; trained mental health professionals provide needed therapy sessions.

We have also created a comprehensive guide to the 36 main types of critical illnesses, which you might find helpful.

Optional children’s cover

AIG Critical Illness Insurance offers an optional add-on to protect your children. This cover applies from birth up to age 22.

It includes payouts for seven core conditions, with benefits set at the lower of £25,000 or half your own benefit amount.

The policy also covers another 16 health issues, each paying either £25,000 or a quarter of your sum insured — whichever is less.

Plus, if hospital stays happen due to illness, such as heart surgery, covered by the policy, you’ll get an extra £100 per night for each child; this applies after seven nights and can total up to £3,000.

This optional children’s protection goes beyond critical illness claims alone; it provides support during difficult times.

It includes a death payment, offering families peace of mind through a lump sum of £5,000 on standard plans or £10,000 on Enhanced Cover options.

Exercise care in choosing this added layer of security so that you are prepared if serious childhood sickness occurs within your family here in the UK.

Child-Specific Conditions Covered Include:

• Cerebral palsy
• Child’s diabetes mellitus Type 1 – Requiring permanent insulin injections
• Child’s intensive care benefit – Requiring mechanical ventilation for seven days
• Cystic fibrosis
• Down’s syndrome
• Muscular dystrophy
• Spina bifida

Knowing that you won’t be reliant on state benefits if your child is diagnosed with conditions requiring adaptations to the home, additional support, and any other financial costs, you won’t be reliant on state benefits.

Life event changes and separation benefits

Life changes can affect how much insurance you require. AIG provides a guaranteed insurability option to increase your Critical Illness Insurance after important events, like buying a larger home or having children.

You don’t need extra health checks if you apply within 13 weeks of the event; this applies as long as you’re under age 55 and have at least five years left on your policy.

The limit for increasing cover is tied either to the additional mortgage amount or to 150% of your original term — whichever is lower — capped at £200,000 or your initial cover amount.

Joint policies with AIG also come with clear separation benefits. If you divorce or separate, you have up to six months afterwards to split one joint policy into two individual ones.

This allows each person independent protection without requiring new medical proof, simplifying future claims—including any AIG critical illness claims—and providing peace of mind through life’s unexpected turns.

Changes to adult cover

The revised critical illness protection plan has also enhanced adult cover to cover more cancer types, including skin, cervical, and prostate cancer, which are considered less advanced.

If someone suffers from less advanced cancer on multiple occasions, they will also pay out numerous times.

New conditions added, paying out in full include:

• Anoxia/Hypoxia – Causing the death of brain tissue & permanent neurological deficit
• Benign Spinal Cord Tumour – If surgically removed, or causes a permanent neurological deficit
• Crohn’s Disease – If treated by more than one intestinal resection
• Parkinson Plus Syndromes – A heading encompassing five progressive neurological conditions that generally cause a permanent deficit
• Spinal Stroke – Death of spinal cord tissue, causing permanent neurological deficit
• Ulcerative Colitis – Treated by colectomy (surgical removal of the bowel)
• Coverage for numerous types of skin cancer

Additional Payment Conditions Extended to Include:

• Cerebral Aneurysm – Extended to cover aneurysms of the spine
• Cerebral Arteriovenous Malformation – Extended to cover Spinal Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM)
• Significant Visual Impairment

The thirty additional payment conditions will pay 25% of the total sum insured on the policy, up to the value of £25,000.

Additional Benefits of AIG Critical Illness Insurance

With AIG Critical Illness Insurance, you also gain access to helpful services like online health advice and emotional support, plus practical benefits during difficult times—find out more below.

Smart Health services

Smart Health comes free with your AIG Critical Illness Insurance policy. It gives you easy online access to doctors so that you can speak to a GP anytime, day or night through video calls or phone chats.

The app also offers personalised fitness and nutrition plans, mental health support, and handy online health assessments.

You can even ask for a second medical opinion from healthcare experts at no extra cost.

The Smart Health service helps keep your wellbeing simple.

It covers all key areas of health, including physical well-being through exercise programmes, diet guidance for healthy eating habits, emotional support from mental health professionals, and quick GP consultations without waiting rooms or delays.

This means less stress about healthcare and instant help at hand whenever you need it most.

Winston’s Wish support

AIG works with Winston’s Wish to give vital support to children grieving the death of a policyholder. This partnership offers emotional support and practical assistance to children when they encounter loss and sadness.

Winston’s Wish is a UK charity that specialises in helping young people manage their grief, offering guidance explicitly tailored to the needs of children.

Through this service, AIG Critical Illness Insurance extends beyond money matters; it shows genuine care for affected families.

Children receive expert assistance directly from skilled professionals at Winston’s Wish, ensuring they are not alone during difficult times.

By working closely together, AIG and Winston’s Wish ensure grieving children get meaningful aid through counselling and focused support programmes.

Funeral pledge

The funeral pledge from AIG Critical Illness Insurance helps alleviate stress during a difficult time. It provides up to £10,000 paid in advance towards funeral costs.

This early payment means families in the UK can focus on grieving rather than worrying about money.

With quick access and simple rules, this benefit is there when needed most.

The Verdict

We believe that AIG critical illness cover is one of the most comprehensive critical illness plans in the market.

The updated policy from AIG follows the Best Practice on Wording for Critical Insurance policies set out by the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

The AIG announcement to revise its coverage is undoubtedly a bold move, and it will likely set a new industry benchmark.

Only time will tell, but as 2025 progresses, other insurance firms are likely to follow suit, revise their plans, and examine the reality of what people need.

AIG life insurance has hit the mark. It is addressing the financial worries of soon-to-be parents. For adult coverage, no other policy (currently) will cover as many types of cancers as those in situ areas of the body.

The new policy covers eighteen cancers in situ and tumours requiring surgery to remove.

The new plan is now the most comprehensive for cancer and Child-Specific conditions.

Helpful external resources on this subject:

• https://www.aig.co.uk/home/risk-solutions/individuals-and-families
• https://www.abi.org.uk/globalassets/files/publications/public/health/abi_bro4965_critical_illness_guide_v4.pdf