Expat Financial Planning – Critical Illness Cover is Vital
11.01.2012

Life insurance is an important element of any expat financial planning strategy – but unfortunately, only a small proportion of expats include critical illness cover in their defensive financial planning. This important subject has recently been discussed by Guardian Wealth Management Senior Executive Officer, David Russell, in the December edition of the Qatar Today magazine.

For many expats, the incentive to travel and work abroad comes from the opportunity to bring home a higher wage than they would in their home country. This allows them to save for the future – but expat financial planning also needs to include an element of protection, should anything unfortunate happen. As well as putting life insurance into place to cater for your family’s needs, critical illness cover should also be seriously considered – especially when the statistics show that expat workers have an increased risk of certain conditions; in fact, the chance of suffering from a stroke, heart attack or cancer diagnosis is three times that of those remaining in their country of origin.

It’s Easy to Overlook Critical Illness Cover – But a Mistake Nonetheless

Critical illness cover is often left out of expat financial planning because at the time of taking the brave step to work overseas, many expats are still fairly young and haven’t yet suffered from any serious health problems. However, if you’re unable to work while aboard due to a serious illness, you could be losing out on the very reason that you went international in the first place – to save a proportion of your increased salary for a better life in the future.

Another reason that critical illness cover can be overlooked is due to the fact that many employment contracts have life insurance terms included – the problem is, when reading the small print, it’s usually discovered that critical illness cover isn’t included as part of this benefit – and if this is the case, then organising your own critical illness cover is essential. When you also take into consideration that many expats who have moved abroad to work with families in tow will quite often be the only wage winner. If you’re in this position, and you were to fall seriously ill and unable to work, critical illness cover provides the means required to continue to support your family at a time where there will be many other stresses to deal with.

You can also choose additional elements with critical illness cover if you wish, such as Permanent Total Disability – which will give you the financial support you need if you were to be involved in an accident or become ill with a condition that leads to disability. Organising critical illness cover need not be complicated either – by using regulated, independent financial advisors to help you, you can hand over the majority of the administration to a professional, so you don’t have to worry about managing your expat financial planning yourself.

Our Financial Advisors Can Help

Here at Guardian Wealth Management, our expat financial advisors would normally recommend organising a critical illness policy that provides a payout at a rate of around four times your annual earnings, that said a lower amount of cover is better than none. We can also ensure that your critical illness cover is one that will be valid for anywhere in the world – so if your expat adventures take you to another jurisdiction, you’ll still have the peace of mind that your critical illness policy will cover you.

It’s clear that critical illness cover is an essential element of your expat financial planning strategy. If you’re an expat living and working abroad, Guardian Wealth Management has independent financial advisors situated all across Europe and the Middle East, and they’re ready and waiting to help you organise this crucial protection product. If you’d like more information on life insurance or critical illness cover for your expat financial planning, feel free to get in touch with our financial advisors today.