Hundred SummersCritical illness cover calculator: how much would a diagnosis need to fund?
The mortgage and debts you would want cleared, income through treatment and recovery, the extra costs serious illness brings: net of cover already held and savings you would use. A transparent needs sum, stated as one. Your figures never leave your browser.
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Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Mortgage to clear | £180,000 |
| Other debts | £5,000 |
| Income to replace | £40,000 for 2 years |
| Extra costs of illness | £10,000 |
| Existing cover / savings | £0 / £15,000 |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Total need | £275,000 |
| Existing cover and savings | £15,000 |
| Cover gap | £260,000 |
The next question
How would we manage on a reduced income? →Income protection calculator
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guide
- Income protection, critical illness or life cover: which risk are you actually insuring? →Three policies, three different events. The population odds of each before retirement, what each policy pays and when, why long absence is the risk most households are least covered for, and how sick pay and savings set the deferred period.
What the lump sum is for
A critical-illness payout arrives on diagnosis, whether or not you can work, and it is spent on three things: removing fixed commitments so that recovery is not a financial emergency (the mortgage, other debts), replacing income for the period treatment and recovery take (one to three years is the common range), and the costs illness adds; home adaptations, travel to treatment, private care, a partner’s time off. The sum is honest because each part is visible; the premium for it depends on age, health, smoking and the number of conditions covered, which a protection specialist quotes.
Where it sits among the three covers
The risk reality calculator shows that long absence from work is far more likely than a listed diagnosis, which is why income protection is usually the first policy and critical illness the second; life cover completes the set and is often bundled with critical illness as one policy paying on the first event. The protection guide puts the three side by side.
Sources
- Association of British Insurers, Protection insurance (what critical illness cover is).
- MoneyHelper, Critical illness insurance.