Consumers considering taking out simple life insurance have been advised to take into account how much it would take to overcome the financial impact of suffering a critical illness and not dying before signing on the dotted line.

Giving personal finance tips in an article in the Scotsman, Edinburgh-based Melville Hutchison financial management director Derek Smith said that it may be wise for people to take out death or earlier critical illness as opposed to death only cover.

He explained that if you are taking out protection to cater for something like a mortgage, \"the fact is that you are probably more likely to suffer a critical illness than to die during the insurance period\".

He went on to state that it is important \"to understand the exact circumstances under which the insurer will pay out\", adding that many different policies are in existence.

Warning that some insurers \"offer life insurance on a very simple, easy to arrange basis\", the expert goes on to say in the article that consumers should beware of deals that come with an \"easy offer\".

Mr Smith explained that \"whilst this can be very convenient, they do not always offer good value for money\". Scottish Widows recently said that critical illness cover is vital because diseases can strike at any time.

There are two ways of setting up a critical illness policy, stand alone critical illness cover and life insurance with critical illness cover.

Stand alone critical illness
A stand alone critical Illness policy is a policy that pays out a tax-free lump sum upon diagnosis of a qualifying critical illness (defined by the specific insurance companies), within the term of the policy.

Life insurance with critical illness cover
Life and Critical Illness is a policy that combines Term life insurance and Critical illness cover and will pay out once for either death of the life assured, upon diagnosis of a terminal illness (this is defined as where the life expectancy is less than 12 months) or diagnosis of a qualifying critical illness, within the term of the policy.

Where can I find out more about critical illness insurance and get cheap quotes?
There are many online insurance sites that provide detailed information on critical illness cover and many insurance brokers on the internet offer discounted critical illness premiums, but what does this mean. When a critical illness policy is set up by an insurance broker or even directly with an insurance company a commission or set up fee is charged to your policy. This commission is paid to the company that sets up your policy and pays for the process of advising you of your options and the time the advisor takes to get you policy accepted. Even if you go direct to the insurance company they will have a department that will have to do the same thing so the commission or set up fee is still charged to your policy.

A discounted critical illness premium is when the company that sets up the policy sacrifices some of this commission and by doing so this reduces the monthly premium you will pay as your policy has been charged less of a set up fee. The best protection insurance comparison sites on the web show this saving in the quotation results page so you can clearly see how much you are actually saving.