Hi, everybody, Alan is back with me and we are discussing arranging protection insurance for someone living with dementia. The very first thing that you need to do, in my opinion, is to consider the person as vulnerable, with partners and children being classed as potentially vulnerable. The next step is to check with your compliance and any other oversight, to determine what you are and are not allowed to advise on in this situation.

Dementia will at some stage have a huge impact on a person and their loved ones and it’s important that you are keenly aware of the need to safeguard this person. Even if a lasting power of attorney is in place so that others can act on their behalf, you need to always go back to basics – what is the insurable need here?

The key takeaways:

• 1 in 3 people will experience dementia
• There can potentially be underwritten life insurance options, but you are likely to see a term cap of 5 years
• Most life insurance options will either exclude pre-existing conditions for the length of the policy, or for an initial moratorium period

I am now taking a break for summer of 2026. Three boys, 7 weeks of school holidays, wish me luck! I will see you in September.

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors PlannerX.

Kathryn Knowles 00:00

Hi everybody! We are on season 12, episode four, and I actually do have Alan back with me this time. I know I’ve kept promising him, and I’ve kept missing actually having him with me, but he is back now. And today we are going to be talking about protection insurance for people in the UK that are living with dementia. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. So, Alan, how are you doing? It’s the beginning of the summer holidays of 2026. Are you feeling all right for the next seven weeks?

Alan 00:55

So far, so good. Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s not too bad. Just driving the kids around still between sporting events and stuff, and helping you keep them entertained through the day. There is a water fight promised, I believe, on one day, so we can’t find a day to do that. We keep putting it off at the moment, but I

Kathryn Knowles 01:14

like the fact that I’ve somehow managed to just be like, “No water fight to dad. That’s that’s your dad’s thing. That’s dad does that, not me. To be fair, I’ve

Alan 01:20

got 550-five water balloons ordered 1000s, so it is going to be good fun.

Kathryn Knowles 01:26

I’m so going to hide in the house. Okay, then. So a little bit of background about dementia. Obviously, most people, I think, have some kind of an idea about dementia. But here’s a bit more background. So, in the NHS in 2025, said that they estimated that over 500,000 people in the UK had a formal diagnosis of dementia. It’s really important to say the the word formal, so that is that you know people have been absolutely yes, you have dementia. That doesn’t include all the people who are actually experiencing it and not yet diagnosed. It is something that kind of creeps up on people over time. I know this is many of you will be aware from previous podcasts and things I’ve said. So my dad has Parkinson’s, and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s dementia. I think it was the beginning, well, early on-ish in 2025. So obviously we’ve seen him before the diagnosis, and as that diagnosis is going on, and I remember I did some dementia training a little while ago, and somebody gave like a good this person’s trainer, I think it was somebody from Dementia UK. They gave the most amazing example I thought in terms of how to try and understand dementia, and they basically said, imagine that you’re in a house and there’s this bookcase against the wall, and like every year that that person’s been alive, there is a book. You know, we’re sort of like you know January when age five, January when age 20. You know, things like that, and it’s all on them. And the younger years are at the bottom, and the older, more recent years are at the top, and so they basically said, imagine that there’s an earthquake, and that bookcase starts obviously jiggling. Well, what’s going to happen? Well, the books at the bottom, where it’s got that third year bit of gravity, that base, they stay put, but the books at the top, where there isn’t as much weight, starts to they start to shake, and some points they will start falling off the bookcase, and that’s I thought was a really really incredible way of describing it because it’s something I’ve seen with my dad recently. We had some relatives come and visit us last weekend, and we were chatting about stuff from the past. Obviously, they they knew my parents obviously before I was born and everything. And my dad, obviously, when you’re with him, he doesn’t remember a lot of things in terms of recent stuff. I mean, he remembers stuff, but you know, he’s like he wouldn’t really remember hospital appointments, or he wouldn’t remember really if we’ve told him, “Oh, well, the kids are going to be doing this on this date. He wouldn’t remember when the date is and things like that. And that, and it’s it’s more than just somebody not having a calendar in front of them. You know, he does. He obviously misses things and he forgets stuff as well. But then one of them said, “Oh, Camber, who was that person’s name? And he suddenly said this person’s name. I don’t think he’s probably spoken about that person for the last 20 odd years. And the relative was like, “You’re absolutely right, sir. You’ve done it. Well done, kind of thing. And they’re also impressed. But that-that’s the whole point-is that his his bookshelf from 20 years ago is really solid in that earthquake, whereas the more recent ones aren’t. So hopefully that gives a little bit of a better understanding. I

Alan 04:37

think that’s when you see, and you’ll see it on TV shows and things like that as well with it, and certainly the ones that are more accurate, where you you’ve got somebody who say has got dementia, and they’ll forget the the partner’s passed away and things like that. They’ll forget the recent events, or yeah. So so they’ll be talking to the partner or asking where the partner is, but actually the partner’s passed away, and it’s because they’re remembering that. Said it got the lower bookshelves, books on the shelf rather than the higher ones. Yeah,

Kathryn Knowles 05:05

I don’t know if that’s going to be. I was going to say that’s going to be horrible because obviously, again, as many people know, my mum passed in February of this year, and we’ve just passed what would have been their 51st wedding anniversary, which was obviously not an easy time for dad. And and in some ways, it would be lovely if he didn’t remember that she passed. But I, I can’t imagine explaining that to him again. I can’t. I don’t think the heartbreak would be. It would be. It would be horrible. Sam, I’m not even going to think of that. I’m going to go into that.

Alan 05:32

Sorry, should I?

Kathryn Knowles 05:33

No, sorry. I’m going to go into that. Right. So the government, you, if you look at their information about medical stuff and statistics that they have, it’s usually people of the age of 60-five that are diagnosed with dementia, but it can be younger than that. And there has been a significant increase in people living with dementia and being diagnosed with dementia since 2020-two I believe it’s a 9.6% increase, which is quite a stark increase. Now, part of that will be accounted for the fact that there are more people living longer and longer, and very naturally, the fact that we are living longer lives does mean that we are seeing significant increases in things like heart attacks, strokes, cancers, Parkinson’s, dementia, everything like that. It’s just that obviously now most people, well, not most necessarily, but a lot of people survive these diagnoses, whereas in the past they didn’t. So the people in the past didn’t get a chance to reach the age of dementia in many ways. If you look at Dementia UK, there are lots of types of dementia, and essentially what it is, it’s when a person’s brain cells stop working as they would usually do. So it affects their ability to remember things, to how they think, and also how they speak. And I said that’s I think is quite a big one with Dad, isn’t it? Probably his way of his ability to think is quite significant, and his ability to speak is quite. I mean, he does speak, but his his processing time is significant.

Alan 06:53

Yeah, because you often think dementia, and you think the forgetting of things, but actually, what you realize by living with it as well, living with with somebody in your life with it is is it’s the confusion as well, isn’t it? That is such a big part, the almost illogical way that things come about. Absolutely,

Kathryn Knowles 07:10

it’s very very confusing. So we do have the most common one that people have heard of is Alzheimer’s, and that is the most common, and it is where there’s a buildup of protein in the brain. We then have vascular, which is the second most common, and that’s to do when there’s issues with blood supply to the brain that causes it. There’s a form of dementia known as Lewy body, which is all to do with movement and motor control. There’s a frontotemporal dementia, which is generally people be the ages of 40-five to 60-five, and that one can change behavior, personality, and emotions. I mean, all of them are very upsetting, but I think that one is is obviously a very upsetting one. The fact that it can it can really change who a person is. You can have a mixed dementia as well, which is where you get two and the characteristics of two different types of them, and then you have things like young onset. So young onset dementia is generally classed as anyone that’s diagnosed before the age of 60-five, and that is much more likely if someone has Parkinson’s or Huntington’s. So, Alzheimer’s Society do say that every three minutes, someone in the UK develops dementia, and that one in three people will develop the condition at some point in the life, and it does cause the most deaths in the UK. And I think when we talk about those different types of dementia as well, and what they they mean and how they affect the body, dementia in itself, because I think sometimes a lot of people kind of entwine dementia and Alzheimer’s. It can be quite hard to know what the distinguishing factor is in some ways, because I think it’s always so closely linked in the fact that Alzheimer’s is the most common, but dementia is the overarching word that refers to the group of symptoms that’s affecting how the brain works due to other conditions. So somebody can have dementia because they have Alzheimer’s, or somebody can have dementia because they have a vascular condition that’s causing it. So, say suspicious dementia is is a group of symptoms, not a condition in itself. Which again feels very, very strange as a way to think about it. I think sometimes in the way that we learn about it. But let’s start off, okay, with our insight into the protection instrument side of things. I’m sure me and Alan will probably natter between the two of us as we go along. But I think a really, really key thing to say is very early on is to caveat that if you are looking at protection insurance for someone living with dementia, you must check with your compliance or any whoever is authorizing your ability to advise and check what you are allowed to do within your own permissions. That might be dictated by your company. It might be dictated by the network. You know, there’s there’s a few different things, but we are going to give you insight as to what is potential. Available or potential best practices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just go off and start doing these things when we mention what’s available. So I think again, I know chatting quite a bit, but I’m going to chat a little bit longer if I let that Alan Loose. So again, as many of you will know if you listen, so I have a lasting power of authority for my dad, and so he has Parkinson’s dementia. So I have full control of his finances. And what I find really, really interesting is that dad has Parkinson’s dementia. I have the LPA for his finances. I have the LPA for his health. So I’ve and they were both set up for me to have immediate control. There was no kind of having to wait for certain things and stuff like that, but the health one will say you can step in once they don’t have capacity, which is obviously a really, really important thing. You don’t want people just making decisions over people’s health for for no reason. But what I find really, really fascinating is that capacity.

Kathryn Knowles 11:02

capacity almost seems to be in the eye of the beholder in many ways, and because we had quite a few issues when we was trying to sort out care for my dad, because they were like, “Well, what do you need? What do you do? And I’d say this and this, and like, and they said to me, “Well, it’s not what your dad needs; it’s what he wants. And I’m like, “I was just like, well, what do you mean? I was like, “He’s got dementia, you know. He doesn’t fully. In his obviously at this point, I was like, his wife’s just passed. I was like, he doesn’t know what he, in a sense, fully wants. Or I know what he wants. He wants you all to leave him alone, but that’s not possible. He needs a full time care. You know, obviously carer to start his meds to do this to do, you know, and everything. And like, but it’s what he wants. And I’m like, so what? What happens then? And you know, the so I wasn’t able to say you need to have a carer with him five times a day when his meds are due, and this, and this, and this. But the local authority was allowed to say that because they obviously had the ultimate say so. So they, I couldn’t override what his wants were, but the local authority could. Now this can cause obviously quite a bit of frustration, because you could be chatting to somebody, and you might find that in your permissions, or potentially with the insurers that you can access, that you actually aren’t able to arrange protection insurance for somebody living with dementia. But they might have been told by a number of people, but you have capacity. So actually, you you you know yes, you do have this, but you have full health capacity. Nobody’s going to be stepping in and doing X, Y, Z. So that’s giving a really, really mixed message. So you might get some frustration from people. It might also be that there’s frustration from people because maybe someone does have a lasting power of attorney for somebody, and you know, if it was a health and finance one, sorry, a finance one that’s been set up and for immediate effect, then you could potentially do the recommendation and arrange the insurance, obviously within your permissions. But let’s say there’s just a health LPA in place, and they say, “Well, I’ve got a health LPA for this person, so obviously I’m clearly a guardian, clearly the person looking after them. You know, but you could say, “But, but they have capacity, and this person simply have dementia. But it says if you know everybody’s saying that they have capacity, you know, and da da da da. You know, I can’t act unless this happens, which again could be really really difficult for the guardians. But regardless, obviously, of what a person might feel or what a guardian might consider to be what is needed, what you should be doing from the very very start is classing this person as potentially vulnerable. I mean, I would say straight away if someone has been diagnosed with dementia that there isn’t even a potential vulnerability there. There is a vulnerability, but again, you must follow your compliance processes, and then from there you would then follow the processes that you would have in your vulnerability and procedures. I have done a podcast before on vulnerable clients, so please do feel free to go back and refer to that if you do want to hear some best practices on what what works well in a business. If you are wanting to to be obviously very on top of things like that, but let’s go into things more with Alan now because I’m sure everybody’d be grateful to hear your voice again for a bit. So, Alan, after those bits, what do we see when applying for things like life insurance for people that are living with dementia?

Alan 14:08

Yeah. So, no, thank you very much. And I think it’s really interesting everything that you’ve been been saying. It’s you know, it’s amazing how many people dementia touches in a sense. You know, even if not directly, but within families, you know, when you start talking about it, you realize how many people have been affected by it because it’s not just the individual; it’s the people who live with them, it’s the family members, as you said, who sought the the LPA and talk to you know the the carers and things like that with it as well. Firstly, I’d agree every single client that you speak to, or partner of a person you speak to, or child of a person you speak to who has dementia, when they are looking for something for that person, that should be marked as vulnerable in in in my mind. And then you know you take you should always take care, take extra care to make sure you are avoiding. Any foreseeable harm to that customer, but I think what’s really quite interesting for me when you’re speaking to somebody who’s got dementia, or when you’re speaking to the partner of the person, is what’s the need for the protection cover, and a lot.

Kathryn Knowles 15:17

It’s obviously go back to basics, isn’t

Alan 15:19

it? It is. It is because actually you might have somebody of working age who is still providing for the family, and they are fearful about what’s to come. They could be diagnosed with Parkinson’s. They might be getting the you know the early signs of dementia and be worried about what’s what’s coming. I think the average life expectancy for somebody overall with dementia is between four and 10 years, depending on the on the type, obviously, and sort of how early it’s diagnosed. I

Kathryn Knowles 15:45

suppose it’s what the what the condition is causing it as well.

Alan 15:48

Condition is that’s causing it exactly, exactly. So the you know the first thing for me is I’d be wanting to understand why are you looking for this insurance at the moment, or why are you looking for this insurance on this individual, if it’s a third party that’s looking at them, and you’ve got to be very aware of the potential for. I’m trying to think of the right word for this. Almost, what am I looking for? Almost that the harm to be done to that person for somebody who. Well, I

Kathryn Knowles 16:19

suppose really, if we go quite bluntly with it, in a sense, you know, somebody comes and says, “Right, I want 100,000 pound ad to be taken on my nan, and you go, “Well, why do you need that? And they just go, “Well, I need it. Oh, by the way, she’s got dementia, and then nan takes a tumble down the stairs. You know that we we need to avoid that kind of scenario.

Alan 16:37

Exactly, absolutely. So there’s a big difference between somebody coming in saying, “Well, I’m looking to insure my mum for you know a million pounds, for example, and I’m looking to insure them for 5000 pound funeral costs, you know, it’s a very very big difference. So, as as Kay says, it’s you know bringing it right back to basics and saying, “What’s the need for this? You know, is it a reasonable amount of cover? But also, are you able to speak to the person in question? Is there a lasting power of attorney in place? If there isn’t, can you get a letter from solicitor or something, you know, from a professional to say that this person is acting in the, you know, in in their interest? It’s taking these steps to make sure that you are avoiding foreseeable harm and that you are doing the right thing. Now, all of that kind of taken into account, it’s also very limited to what you can actually do for someone who’s living with dementia. Is it properly appropriate for me to talk about the type of things that we would need to know and what covers we would want to? You know, that’s what

Kathryn Knowles 17:36

we’re here for.

Alan 17:38

I have a habit of skipping ahead and oh

Kathryn Knowles 17:41

no, I’m just. I mean, I think the really key thing is, you know, just to sort of sort of summarizing this sort of like bit as well as the fact that you know the majority of insurers are going to decline. Yes, you know, because it’s all about a lot of these are they are ultimately contracts with the client. The person with dementia is the client, and the insurer needs to make sure or wants to be very sure that this person knows what they’re signing up for. Now, if you do have something where there’s a lasting power of attorney, then that can potentially come in and bring a slightly different dynamic. And and obviously, there’s not necessarily as much of a need there, depending on the lasting power of attorney, because there’s different types, and then there’s also certain caveats within different ones. So if you’re not familiar with them, and you’re like, “Oh, well, there’s an LPA. I’ll just go ahead with this. You need to make sure that you understand when it’s allowed to kick in, if it has already kicked in or not. But I think a really key thing is, you know, what would be a no. That’s a really key thing from the start for anybody. So before you even get into maybe even saying what is the basics, and and obviously going back to basics is the key thing. But if ultimately, if you speak to your compliance or whoever’s overseeing you, and they say someone’s got dementia, no. Someone’s got an LPA for someone with dementia, no, then you know the conversation stops, and you need to signpost.

Alan 18:57

Yeah, absolutely. But but even I guess you know to to kind of go to your point of well, what can actually be done with it? So let’s say you do get that sign off, and that’s okay, and you can have the conversation. Well, actually, the options are so limited anywhere. From my experience, if you say dementia to any mainstream insurer, it is pretty much going to be a decline off the bat, and that could be partly because of the financial, you know, the ability to make financial decisions, but actually the life expectancy that I’ve just mentioned, the fact that it is degenerative, it will scare and shut us off, and therefore the default is likely to be decline. We have been able to get quotes for people with dementia. I think the maximum from memory has been a five-year term, so you know it’s a short-term risk, and that’s only for the early stages, the best scenario type cases. So whole of life, although I’m caveating that because I’m going to come back to whole of life, but typical underwritten whole of life, say for IHT purposes, is probably going to be off the card. Unless you look at a joint life second death policy, which again you’ve done a previous podcast on, yeah, I have no fatal decline. So you’ve got you know potential for doing it on single life pricing. There are potentials for things like that, but yeah, as for an underwritten policy, my experience five year term maximum type of things you would need to know the types of dementia, the type of dementia it is, when it was diagnosed, the symptoms you’re probably going to need to know about the progression. Are they be able to make financial decisions independently? Copies of MRI, CT scans, things like that. It’s going to be a very complicated case, and to be honest, the majority of people I suspect would love to signpost something like this because it’s not something you see every day,

Kathryn Knowles 20:44

but it’s really hard I think as well in terms of the progression because you know trying to understand that because you know you just might say well what are the symptoms and it’s just like well what aren’t the symptoms in some ways so so I can I mean I can speak from my dad and my granddad who I believe had dementia as well um yeah he did. Now I don’t know if this is obviously the same for everybody, but and one of the first things that happened was hygiene started to go out of the window, and you know, I mean, and that’s horrible and it’s embarrassing. But obviously, you wouldn’t be speaking to clients and asking them about that. Really, don’t ask them about that because obviously, you know, it is something incredibly personal. But you know, it’s a case of hygiene is usually one of the first things that you start to really notice. Then, obviously, the lack of disinterest in food, the lack of interest in water, the ability to be safe and and remember where they are when they’re outside, which is again, it all builds up as to why the life expectancy starts to drop because they stop being able to look after themselves physically in lots and lots of different ways. If you remember, my

Alan 21:44

grandma was in skate parks. Every time she was in hospital, she was getting out, and honestly, she

Kathryn Knowles 21:48

was amazing.

Alan 21:48

She was wandering the streets at 4o’clock in the morning. No idea.

Speaker 1 21:51

I know. I was

Alan 21:52

going to do this because she was just escaping, wasn’t she? No,

Kathryn Knowles 21:54

I was just like, I mean, I was very worried about it. But at the same point, I was just like, right on, you you take them all on love, you know, kind of thing.

Alan 22:00

Still never learn because no,

Kathryn Knowles 22:01

she still got out, and obviously they can actually hurt themselves quite a bit as well, especially if they’re receiving treatments and they suddenly become alert and don’t realize what’s going on. It’s an incredibly scary time for them. It’s very very frightening. So the progression side of it is really hard. But I think you know probably from that that you say in terms of like an early side of things, you know, maybe are they still potentially able to work a bit? You know, some people with dementia will be. I mean, obviously not saying necessarily for for a very long period of time, and certainly not in certain roles, but they might be able to. They might still be able at this stage to still be quite independent. Yeah. So that would be obviously a really really key thing.

Alan 22:40

And they are more the types, I guess, of people that you are likely to be able to do something for. Yeah. So I guess to to kind of summarize the options that that so I mean you’ve got an underwritten five year term potentially that that I’m aware of usually quite expensive, very strict, obviously. Joint life, second death as a notion of decline is a possibility, and you have got some guaranteed acceptance type life insurance policies for a younger person. And personally, I wouldn’t do this, but there are some policies where they exclude pre-existing conditions. I wouldn’t do that if someone’s got this because I think too much could be linked to it, but there is a guarantee.

Kathryn Knowles 23:22

I completely. So what I would say is I agree with that, and in terms from an advice, would I be able to advise somebody on that? But I’m going to give you scenario. Okay, so let’s say so even people like us are early 40s. There are a couple, and one of them does develop early onset dementia, means that they haven’t. We’ve checked. We can’t get underwritten cover anywhere, but they’ve got a mortgage. Now we know that you can potentially do a guaranteed life policy that’s not medically underwritten, but will exclude pre-existing conditions. Now, the tricky thing about that is, is that you know we wouldn’t arrange that, but they could find it themselves.

Alan 24:03

Yeah.

Kathryn Knowles 24:05

But at the same point, in terms of being informed and in terms of what they want, so if they decide, well, actually, on the off chance that we maybe even just consider this as an accidental death policy rather than an full life insurance, it might be something that they want to consider

Alan 24:20

potentially. Yeah, and and you are right, and it gets into a very almost tricky area where there is quite a high risk because even doing down the accidental death, you could still have the tie-in that will actually the

Kathryn Knowles 24:35

accident happened because they have dementia.

Alan 24:37

They were out in the middle of the night because they just get hospital, whatever that sort of thing was, you know, there could be potential time. You know, they put themselves in a dangerous position because of the dementia, something like that. So, but but you’re absolutely right. Yeah, is it better than nothing potentially? I think it depends

Kathryn Knowles 24:53

upon the size of the mortgage, doesn’t it? If it was a mortgage of like 20 grand, then you’d probably thinking, is it really? You know, worth it. But if it’s like a 500 grand mortgage, you might think, do you know what? It’s probably better for us to do this on the off chance.

Alan 25:06

And to go right back to your very first comment, talk to your compliance department. Yeah, and this is the exact reason why, because even we made a bit in it.

Kathryn Knowles 25:14

Well, yeah, I mean, but I think that’s that’s so good, though, so healthy to be debated. But like I said, as a company, we wouldn’t do it because that is our stance. Other companies might do, but you know people could be made potentially aware of things that are available. Obviously, that there isn’t advice being given, but yeah, go on for the other options. A

Alan 25:34

couple of other things I will mention because I think these are potentially a little bit more suitable. So I can’t name these companies, but there are a couple of insurers who work direct to consumers. For customers, I want to say under the age of 70, roughly, not over 50s policies. I’ll talk about those in a second. But these are for sort of younger clients where they are guaranteed acceptance. They have a moratorium where the client’s got to live for one or two years. Cover can maybe run up until 70, and there might be something like a 50 grand payout on death without pre-existing health exclusion. So there are policies that exist like that online without pre-existing, but it’s direct consumed. So we can recommend it. So you know potential there again, people find them online, signposting things like that. But actually, given the majority of people diagnosed with dementia are over the age of 51, policy that that does potentially fit for some people is guaranteed over 50s cover. Now, normally, as advisers, we shy away from this quite a lot because we think, oh, guaranteed over 50s policies are usually quite expensive, no medical, see them advertised on the territory, stuff like that. Well, actually, they’re not great value for money. You’re better with proper Hall of Life cover, and for some people, that’s true. But actually, where you start to bring in medical conditions, and especially something like this, assuming that you have capacity to be it or they have capacity to talk to you about it and understand it, well, the idea with a guaranteed over 50s policy is you buy it with no medical questions. You’ve got to live for a period of time, anywhere between six months and two years is normal yet. If you die in that period, the insurer refunds the premiums, maybe a little bit more, covers accidental death quite often in the first two years. But once you’ve had the policy for that period of time, the moratorium has passed. It’s full death cover.

Kathryn Knowles 27:17

Yeah,

Alan 27:18

and yes, if you live to 90, you’ve probably paid more into that policy than the family get back, but actually, that’s

Kathryn Knowles 27:25

very unlikely. It’s very unlikely

Alan 27:26

because if you die within five or 10 years’ time, usually the family have got more money from it. It’s also quite good because you’re limiting it to funeral type cover levels. You know, you’re not going to get 200 grand’s worth of cover. You’re going to get 1015, 20,000 which becomes more reasonable for paying a funerals and things like that. So, it doesn’t

Kathryn Knowles 27:48

make you as worried that grandma’s going to get thrown down the stairs, kind of thing.

Alan 27:51

Exactly, exactly. So, actually, they are something worth exploring. Again, caveat with the whole compliance point that we’ve mentioned: the vulnerable customers, a complicated area. Yeah, but it is a potentially viable and actually quite a good way of being able to to arrange cover. So I think that’s my summary. It’s a bit of a complicated summary on this one. And as with anything, there are options. There are usually options. The complexity of this one comes more to the early stage conversations: what you can do, what you shouldn’t do, and and I guess is there anything then that is suitable, viable, and maybe is inverted commas better than not having anything at all?

Kathryn Knowles 28:28

Yeah, I think that’s obviously makes a really really good point. But I think it’s key to say that it’s probably going to be at least for a period of time an accidental side of things for books. You know, we are probably going to have moratorium for stuff that advisors can generally do. It’s probably going to be, and so advice can do more than just the ones with moratorium periods. But the ones that we’re probably going to do that have an actual higher chance of paying out, we’re probably going to see a little period of time at least. But like you say, something like the over 50s plans, it’s such a good you know because a lot of the time, like you said, there’s that moratorium period that can be depending upon when they take it out or who they take it out with anywhere from six months to two years. But like you say, if they pass during that time, that gets a refund, and usually the refund is 100% of the premiums paid in plus an extra 50% back. So they are usually getting more back than what the family have put in, even in that initial period, which is is obviously really important. Are there anything else that you think that we should discuss?

Alan 29:31

So I had a few other things I was just going to mention, just because I think on this topic it’s really important to to bring these to to the forefront because not everyone will will be aware of these. So the first one is bear in mind: ask people if they have got critical illness or serious illness cover in place, because dementia and Alzheimer’s are claimable conditions under critical illness policies once they’ve reached a certain severity. So actually, you’re talking about life insurance, etc. You might not even need that if they get a payout under a critical illness policy. So just always remember to ask. Another thing, again, I think this goes goes past a lot of people. They don’t necessarily think of it, and I will name drop them on this one. But Vitality, so Vitality have a serious illness product, which is similar to critical illness cover, more severity based, they have the feature on a lot of their serious illness products to include dementia and frail care cover. I believe from memory there is an option which doesn’t cost, and an option which costs a little bit more. Forgive me if that’s wrong or out of date, but from from my memory from last time that was what it was. But the idea is that when the policy expires, when a serious illness cover expires, you get the option to convert it to a dementia and frail care cover, so you can continue paying for it. And if you develop a degenerative condition like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, general frailty, that’s going to result in care and things like that, obviously subject to their definitions, there can be a lump sum payout. Obviously, you don’t have to convert it, you don’t have to carry on with it, but it gives you the option, and it’s something unique. And especially if you’ve got someone who’s been touched by dementia in the family, mentioning this can be really, really valuable. The only other thing I will mention is there is an insurance day for dementia as well? That this year, every single year, it does it. It is where lots of people from the insurance insurance industry do fundraising and things like that. I know Zurich have got behind this very big in the past as well, and quite often shout quite loudly about it. I believe it is the Insurance United Against dementia campaign, and this year it is on the 26th of November, 2026 Obviously, 2026 from 2026 Yeah, but yeah, insurance day for dementia. Google it, have a look at it, keep an eye out for it, and if anyone wants to get behind it, obviously it’s it’s a great cause for raising awareness and and funds for people living with the milk chain.

Kathryn Knowles 32:02

Fantastic. Well, thank you, Alan, for going through that. I hope that’s given everybody a really, really good insight, at least for what you need to consider. I know we’ve not sort of like given any specific things to say. Absolutely, do this. I’ll do that. But it is really important that you have at least considered it, especially as part of you know potentially vulnerable client training. So thank you for listening, everybody. I am going to be taking a bit of a break over the summer, just because you know three boys, seven weeks of summer holidays. It’s going to be fun working at the same time. Wish me luck. So next time I will be back in September, and it is going to be an episode that is very close to my heart. So see you soon, everybody. Visit the website practical-protection.co.uk for your CPD. Thanks to our sponsors, Planner X. Bye, everybody.

Alan 32:50

Bye. Bye,

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