Strictly speaking, no.
You see, life insurance exists to replace the income of a breadwinner.
And if your kids are anything like mine, they certainly aren’t winning any bread.
Eating it, yes and slowly bleeding you dry.
Please, Daddy, can I have a new pair of trainers.
Please Daddy, can I have a new phone.
Please Daddy, can I have a PS5
How about you get a job, you bum!
But Daddy, I’m only 12.
Pfff, always with the excuses!
You can’t buy a separate policy, but when you buy life insurance, cover for your children is included.
The amount of children’s life cover included on your policy varies from insurer to insurer:
Most insurers won’t payout if the child dies before surviving a certain time period.
Imagine being in the room when that decision was made and not putting your hand up to say “this is abhorrent – every child should be covered from birth”
But look, nobody put their hand up so here we are.
One of my clients had a claim where his son died after just three weeks (RIP).
I had expected the insurer to make an exception on compassionate grounds but they wouldn’t.
The poor child would have had to survive to 3 months in order to get a claim.
Irish Life is the fairest insurer because they cover your child from birth so fair play to them.
Children’s life insurance ends once the child reaches 21, or 25 if in full-time education.
You can’t buy a separate serious illness policy for a child, but they are covered automatically if you buy serious illness cover.
All the insurers cover your child for the lesser of 50% of your serious illness coverage or €25,000.
Some provide cover-up to the age of 25, while others stop at 21 so be sure to check the small print before you sign up.
If you have recently had a baby, congratulations!
If it was in the last six months, you might be able to adjust your policy without answering any medical questions using the Guaranteed Insurability Option,
The what now?
This lets you increase your cover without medical underwriting on the birth or adoption of a child.
The insurer cannot take into account any health issues (pregnancy-related or otherwise) you may have had since you first took out your policy.
More details in this blog on guaranteed insurability.
God forbid, if your child is diagnosed with a serious illness, you can obtain a second medical opinion from the world’s leading medical professionals.
Aviva’s Best Doctors v Royal London’s Helping Hand
tl/dr Aviva’s is much better.
If you have hospital cash cover on your policy, your child gets free cover of between €30-€60 per day.
If the treatment your child requires is not available here, Zurich will provide a lump sum of €25,000 to cover the cost.
Did you read any of this blog ?
I’ll repeat:
You can’t buy life insurance for a child but the insurer includes some free coverage for them on your life insurance policy.
Ah here ?
You can’t buy serious illness cover for a child but the insurer includes some free cover for them on your serious illness policy.
If you have children but don’t have a clue about how much, or what type of cover you need, let me help!
Simply complete this questionnaire and I’ll be back over email with a no-obligation recommendation
Thanks for reading
Nick
lion.ie | Protection Broker of The Year ?
As Ireland's leading life insurance broker, we specialise in comparing the rates and policies from the top five Irish life insurance providers and offering the very best value quotes to suit the individual needs of our clients. Our expertise lies in finding a suitable insurance plan for those with specific needs, be it a particular illness, occupation or claim history, we've got you covered in every sense!
Watch our video
