Back to the drawing board - it's time for a fresh approach to Critical Illness (CI) cover

At FMI we never stop asking ourselves if something can be done better and that is exactly how we approached the design of our critical illness benefit.

We interviewed survivors and sufferers of various critical illnesses; ordinary people who’ve experienced the impact first hand.

They told us:

1. They desperately wanted easy-to-understand information about their condition and needed to be sure that they had been correctly diagnosed and would receive the best treatment available;
2. They needed to pay for medical expenses not covered by their medical schemes;
3. They were not physically or emotionally able to work at full capacity for the full duration of their illness and wanted time to recuperate before returning to work after their treatment was complete;
4. There were significant extra monthly costs as a result of their condition;
5. The trauma and stress of coping with the illness affected both them and their families; and
6. They wanted help taking care of their everyday responsibilities which did not disappear when they got sick.

We have developed a complete critical illness solution.

FMI’s solution is a truly unique set of four benefits. The power lies in how they work together to meet all six needs identified in our research.

1. Medical Second Opinion

In a first for the South African market, FMI has partnered with Mediguide to bring the Medical Second Opinion service to all future policyholders at no extra charge. This service provides an independent review of a client’s diagnosis and treatment plan from a choice of leading medical centers around the world. This gives clients the peace of mind that they have all the information they need to make critical decisions about their health.

2. CI Lump Sum

Our CI Lump Sum benefit is as comprehensive as any in the market, with all the choices and flexibility expected from a modern day CI benefit. 274 conditions are covered with both tiered and non-tiered options available.

It is also future-proofed through the introduction of a hospital expense benefit which pays for any condition not listed on the critical illness event table that results in hospital expenses of more than R250 000 over a 12 month period.

In addition, FMI has improved the quality and breadth of cancer cover by including a unique breast reconstruction benefit and the most comprehensive early cancer cover available.

3. A unique, market first CI Income benefit

When combined with FMI’s market-leading Temporary Income Protector (TIP) benefit, all SCIDEP conditions and any major CI events will pay 130% of your TIP sum insured for 12 months. The 12-month period has been specially designed to cater for treatment and recuperation while the
extra 30% will cover the inevitable extra monthly expenses.

The problems with existing benefits in the market:

• Current CI benefits in the market only offer lump sum pay-outs, even though not all needs are best met by a lump sum.
• Income protection benefits replace your income when you can’t work but don’t adequately address the impact of intermittent treatment.
• Income protection benefits are limited to 100% of your income and don’t allow for extra monthly costs while receiving treatment.
• Insurance benefits seldom address the ‘softer’ issues – the emotional toll that comes with the shock of diagnosis and the stress of coping with treatment.

The advantages of combining income and lump sum benefits are obvious:

• it simplifies the planning process and better meets the actual needs by removing the risks of using a lump sum to provide an income; and
• it’s more cost efficient because equivalent income benefits are cheaper than lump sums.

4. CI Assist

We’ve also automatically included benefits to the value of R50 000 to help your client’s family with the emotional toll and the day to day stresses of coping with a critical illness. These come at no additional charge!