Hi everyone, we have Alan Knowles back with us and we are taking a look at how living with chronic fatigue syndrome can influence your options for life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection. 

Chronic fatigue syndrome or ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) is a long term condition that can cause significant tiredness, pain, brain fog, sensitivity to light and many other things. Approximately 1.3m people are living with the condition in the UK and it can alter your options for insurance, especially critical illness cover and income protection.

The key takeaways:

• Most critical illness policies will exclude any claims for Total Permanent Disability
• It is likely that most options for personal income protection will not be available, but there are alternatives
• Two case studies of arranging life insurance for people who are living with chronic fatigue syndrome

Next time it will just be me doing the podcast and I will be focusing upon protection and IHT case studies.  

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 NextGen Planners.

Kathryn Knowles  00:22

Hi everyone we are on season 10, episode nine, and Alan is back with me to give us some more underwriting insights. Hi Alan, hi Kathryn. Hi everyone. Today we’re going to be talking about how living with chronic fatigue can influence your insurance options. This is the practical protection podcast. So before we really get into things, Alan, how are you? Sun shines out. You happy? I

 

Alan Knowles  00:57

am absolutely fine, apart from having loads of fun with telecommunications things this morning in the office, and which is lots of fun. Somebody decided to cancel one of our internet lines without permission, and not, not somebody who works for us, but somebody at the telecoms company. So just what you want in the morning is spending a on a Monday morning as well. Well, actually, he started on Saturday, actually. So loads of fun, but, but all is good. The sun is shining, so

 

Kathryn Knowles  01:24

yeah, and we’re still able to actually, luckily, we’ve got backups, aren’t they? So very, very grateful for backups and things like that. Okay, so getting into things now, I’m going to try and say the actual, the official term for chronic fatigue syndrome, which is myalgic encephalomyelitis. Nice. Thank you. I did it. I did it. I did feel like I did that. Thank you. A bit American. I really hope myself, you’ve not

 

Alan Knowles  01:52

written it out phonetically. I

 

Kathryn Knowles  01:56

just went for it. It’s like family, familial hypercholesterolemia. Once you’ve done it, you just have to keep saying it, maybe every couple of days, so you never lose it. Okay, then, so back to chronic fatigue syndrome. I’m not saying the Emmy version ever again, just in case. So long term condition that can affect different parts of the body in lots and lots of different ways, but most people do associate it with tiredness and fatigue. I mean, the name is literally chronic fatigue syndrome, which is why people do do that. And there are quite a few different charities and support organizations, and it’s it’s interesting with chronic fatigue, I find because it’s such a range, and it’s like with most conditions, there’s a complete range of how much is affecting somebody. So it could be that somebody’s got chronic fatigue and it is affecting them, but actually, they’ve been able to adapt work. They’ve been able to adapt their lifestyle. So in a sense, it almost doesn’t feel like it’s impacting them in many ways, because they’ve just been they’re in that position where they can adapt things. But then for other people, it can obviously that the adaptations just might not be available due to their employer or other things. It could even be down to local transport, even it could be that the condition and the symptoms are very, very intense. So if you look at action for me, they have it. There’s one in four people are house bound due to chronic fatigue syndrome. At the moment, the cause of me is not known. There are some studies, and they’re suggesting that it could be linked to having had some form of a virus that seems to be quite a common cause, common denominator for people. But it isn’t sort of set in stone at the moment. And I think that’s possibly because it’s there doesn’t seem to be a consistency of if you’ve had this virus, then it’s leading to chronic fatigue. I think it’s just that maybe people who have been diagnosed with a condition remember having had some kind of a virus and and then that’s where it’s come from. It’s going to

 

Alan Knowles  03:46

say that’s quite interesting, that it’s actually that the symptoms of me are quite similar to long COVID, so they share a lot of similarities. So again, exception

 

Kathryn Knowles  03:53

that in here. So you’re getting ahead of me. I’ve literally got that about a sentence away. Shows I read the prep doc. Yes, he did. So there’s about roughly 1.3 million people in the UK living with me, or me like symptoms. So that’s something that I really wanted to bring here, because you might again be thinking, well, how often am I going to come across a client that has chronic fatigue, or MA, you know, because people willing to change those names for it, and builds me 1.3 million people. That’s that’s a lot of people. So you know, I’d be surprised if, when you’re an advisor, if in your entire advice career, that if you don’t come across somebody that is living with a condition, and just as Alan was mentioning there as well, so long, COVID isn’t chronic fatigue, but it does affect people in similar ways. So, you know, you might hear some sort of got long COVID. It’s like chronic fatigue or vice versa. But it’s it just has that, obviously it can really affect the so many parts of the body, so many different things, of being able to interact with people socially or at work or at school. So, you know, I’ve come across and, you know, certainly I know there’s some people that I’ve seen on Twitter and that where their kids have had long COVID And, you know, they’re at school age, you know, which is just, it’s just so sad to see. So Alan, over to you now, so you’re not going to be told off for sharing anything. And can you start off by giving us a bit of background on Amy, please. So basically, what it is the kinds of questions that we would need to ask somebody if they were wanting protection insurance. Yep,

 

Alan Knowles  05:27

absolutely. So. So Amy, as you’ve said, I mean, it’s a neurological condition. I think, I think you did say that. I did not. Well, if you didn’t, it is classed as a neurological condition. There is no test to find out, no single test. It’s a little bit like fibromyalgia, and as you say, long COVID and things like that. It’s almost it’s ruling out other things, looking at people’s history and things like that. And an interesting one, before I forget, you might want to come back to claims on that as well, and how that might impact potentially, for claims for certain products, but when it comes, you know, for symptoms and things like that, you know, it’s obviously the first one is tiredness. It’s that exhaustion, you know, feeling just extremely fatigued, and different people in different different ways. For that, some people get it much worse after sort of exertion or sort of mental stimulus. There’s a phrase for it, which is classed as post exertion, malaise. Thank you. But you know, as as, again, with like things like Fibro, it can come with other things like sleep disturbances, so insomnia, for example, and things like that, which people probably wouldn’t

 

Kathryn Knowles  06:37

think of, would they? Because, you know, you’ve got chronic fatigue, but you’ve also got insomnia. I think quite a lot of people go, how does that you’ve does that even Yeah, how do they go together? You

 

Alan Knowles  06:45

think about when you’re over tired, yeah, and actually becomes very hard to sleep sometimes because you are over tired, or potentially, they’ve been tired during the day, and maybe not exactly then actually, it makes, well, they may have had to sleep during the day,

 

Kathryn Knowles  06:55

which has then led them to not be able to sleep on a night time, which is needing to insomnia on a night time, which is a vicious circle. You know, there’s so many areas, things like

 

Alan Knowles  07:03

headaches, because obviously, again, you’ve got pressure, you’ve got tension, you’ve got stress, and things like that, muscle aching, you know, lots of things, brain fog, you know. And again, you look at the similarities between Long COVID and and fiber and other conditions like that, and you’ve got those similarities of other things. I

 

Kathryn Knowles  07:21

think the brain fog is pretty understandable as well. I think everybody, I mean, I’m not saying that everybody, certainly not saying that everybody has chronic fatigue, but I think most people have had a situation where they are beyond shattered. You know, it could be jet lag from a long flight. It could be that you have done a long journey of another saw and you are just absolutely lost legs you might have done like you were doing, like not triathlons the other ones you did, give you the try, the triathlons that you did and things like that. And you know, you are just beyond shattered, and your brain just, you know, being able to do anything, just even the functioning of being able to think, well, what am I going to do for food? What am I going to get when I get to the shops, anything like that? You know, it’s, you know, we’ve all had it where we’ve collapsed on a sofa. I’m assuming all of us have had it. I’ve certainly had it where we’ve collapsed on a sofa. And obviously, that’s usually to an isolated incident, whereas this could be regularly during the day, you know, it’s quite intense. So

 

Alan Knowles  08:22

to questions that you’re likely to be asked then, so if you’re looking at life insurance, critical illness, and I’m going to say income protection, but let’s, let’s come back to income protection. So the type of questions that you’re likely to ask are, when has it been diagnosed, or has it been diagnosed? Because is this just something that somebody has but actually hasn’t sought any help or hasn’t seen a GP about and obviously that can cause problems, because if somebody’s not seen a GP about it, well, actually, is there something else going on? Is there something that’s causing this? So obviously insurers are going to want a definite, or as definite a diagnosis as they possibly can do, and how often or sort of how recent are the symptoms? Do you take any treatment? Is there any associated insomnia or any associated mental health condition? Does it affect your ability to work, either in part or completely? Some insurers will ask about being in receipt of benefits as well. So that can be used as a bit of an indicator. And I’m assuming we’ll come back to potential outcomes. Or do you want me to? Yeah, no,

 

Kathryn Knowles  09:22

absolutely. We’ll come back to potential outcomes. And I was going to say that just for you, saying that about the receipt of benefits, I think that’s something that’s quite important for advisors to be mindful of, and it’s almost a good idea to have that as part of your find. You know, are you in receipt of any benefits? Because then it’s not like you’re saying you’ve got chronic fatigue. Are you in seat of PIP, you know, and start being quite tagged, or just like any condition, which could be quite direct, it could be a bit upsetting for somebody and but if it just comes part and parcel of your financial questions, like, what do you do for living? What’s your income? And if someone says, Well, I can’t work because of this, you’d be okay. So, so what is your income? And then you. Will find probably that it is due to benefits, because that can, and I’ve said this before on the podcast, that can influence at times, the insurance because, you know, you can have chronic fatigue, and some people are still able to work. They’re still able to do the majority of things that other people do. So they wouldn’t generally be in receipt of something like Pip, but if it is quite intense, there’s symptoms, and the regularity of symptoms, then they might well be in receipt of PIP. And it does tend to give you as an advisor and and obviously the underwriters as well, but it gives you that little bit of insight to think, right? If this person’s receiving Pip, then they’re obviously quite poorly, because it is not an easy benefit to get, and you need to show that you are disabled to be able to get it. So if somebody was saying to you, it barely affects me, but I get Pip. That wouldn’t be something that would match up. So you would maybe just want to speak to a colleague for some guidance as to how to address that. So that’s a bit of a segue there, but I’ve just I went off on the tangent for the right thing.

 

Alan Knowles  11:01

Well, to be fair, just another little tangent on that as well. It is really important to ask about things like that. At fact, find stage, because actually, whilst PIP isn’t means tested, there are some like Universal Credit, which are means tested. And don’t forget that an insurance payout, whether it be life kick or IP, could affect those benefits for people going forward as well. Not to say that they’re not worthwhile having the policy still, but things that we need to be aware of and identify for customers,

 

Kathryn Knowles  11:26

absolutely. And I do know that there’s been peers in the industry who have had that where, you know, say, potentially, a child has received a children’s critical illness payout, and actually, the sheer amount of that has stopped the Universal Credit, which is quite a shock, but, you know, that’s again, right? It’s really important to find out about the benefits, but also have statements in your recommendation letters. You know, that’s, you know, sustainment says, if you’re in receipt of benefits, some of these payouts can potentially alter what benefits you have access to. And it comes

 

Alan Knowles  11:57

back to seeking advice. You know, advice is not just there when you’re setting it up. It’s also when you’re claiming as well. So who should the money go for? What should it be used for? Etc. Absolutely. The

 

Kathryn Knowles  12:06

other thing I was just going to go back to, if it’s okay, we’re talking about the chronic fatigue, I know I mentioned about the sleep, the brain fog. There are other things as well that could potentially be there. So, you know, potentially sensitive to light, sounds, taste and smell. So, you know, you might potentially even have someone who has specific has specific glasses to try and help with the light sensitivity. There can be things like heart palpitations, so they might even be taking something like a beta blocker to help with the palpitations, depending upon that. And obviously there would need to be a lot of consideration with that, in combination with the tiredness that can be feeling dizzy. There can be intolerances to food, which sometimes that can then lead to other things in terms of the digestion, which can have actually an impact in terms of the insurance options as well. You’d mentioned about treatments and things like that. And I think there is things like cognitive behavior therapy. Can be something that is used. Can obviously get things like pain medications, sleep medications, to help with, with how intense it might be and and as with anything it’s, it’s, it’s finding out that information. It’s making sure we know what the name of the medication is, what the dosage is, because if it’s just paracetamol over the counter test goes, that’s not really going to be a concern for the insurer. But if we’re talking quite a high, you know, Coco, Amy look, you know? So I had codeine tablets, don’t even

 

Alan Knowles  13:28

worry that much about cocoa. Them all too much. I would say it’s more Europeans and things like that. If you start getting into like morphine and things like that, that’s when it’s probably more of a concern. But you you codeine type things, they’re probably still not that worried. Amy tripty Leanne as well, is quite often used. Amy try to Leanne is quite an interesting one, because it is an antidepressant and a muscle relaxant. Yeah, you see it being used for the headaches, for the condition in itself, but also it can help with the mood regulation. And again, it’s not a bad thing when, when that’s on there, either. It’s almost expected, I think, with with quite a lot.

 

Kathryn Knowles  14:01

Okay, next bit for you.

 

Alan Knowles  14:04

Yeah. So what do you want to know? Next you want to know about underwriting outcomes? Or, I

 

Kathryn Knowles  14:10

think underwriting outcomes would be really useful, because we’ve gone through what it is we’ve gone through how it affects somebody, things to sort of like the questions always, just have your set questions of, when was it diagnosed? What is it? What medications or treatments do you take? How does it affect your ability to to do work or other things? Another one that can sometimes be useful, but not always necessarily relevant to the insurance questions you know, ability to drive, and because some people you know, depending upon the medical condition, are not allowed to drive, and depends, obviously, on how serious it is. So all those kinds of things can be just, you know, because a lot of people, when I train them, they’re always asking me, Well, how do I add this into just my regular fact find? Because if you just do mortgages, or if you just do pensions, and you’re trying to Bucha into protection, you’re already asking a ridiculous amount of things anyway, so, but. Leanne, this in is quite small, so just adding those really sort of like bullet point questions as much as you can. And so we’ve done all that. So yeah, the outcomes, and then we’ll do claims. I remember that you said about claims. So,

 

Alan Knowles  15:11

yeah, so I mean, I guess the good thing is that actually, if you just look at me as an isolated condition, life and critical illness cover, you can usually get standard rates, or near on standard rates. So life insurance alone, even if somebody isn’t working and they are in receipt of PIP and benefits. There are some providers, not all, but there are some who will give you standard rates for life insurance, assuming that there is nothing kind of concern elsewhere going on, like you mentioned, heart palpitations, obviously, that they’d want to know more about, or mental health, insomnia, they’re going to want to know more about these things, critical illness cover again, usually what I would say nearly standard rates. You won’t get TPD. So total permanent disability is almost certainly going to be excluded, excluded from the policy. You might find that some insurers maybe exclude things like loss of independent existence as well, but usually it’s the TPD exclusion that comes through on it. Otherwise,

 

Kathryn Knowles  16:13

what would the mental health exclusion? Because so that, because I think this will be, it’s intriguing for me, because when we have mental health exclusions on things and some kick policies can potentially put a mental health on if they do cover psychosis, is that it’ll say any mental health condition, including, but not limited to anxiety, depression, and then it’ll list chronic fatigue and Amy, often in fibromyalgia. So does that mean that we’d maybe get a mental health exclusion on the critical illness,

 

Alan Knowles  16:41

potentially, if you go in for one of the enhanced ones. And I think because these are so co almost trying to think of the word, but it’s fine, yeah,

 

Kathryn Knowles  16:51

they say come up, which I just think sounds an awful word, yeah.

 

Alan Knowles  16:55

And there are other phrases for it as well, which maybe suit this one better, which I can’t remember, intertwined, probably works quite well. But you know, you do usually find that chronic fatigue, and not every circumstance, but you do find that quite often there is a mental health disclosure or an antidepressant or something alongside it. And you know, it’s understandable similar for fibromyalgia as well. Now, whether you know they coexist, or whether actually the condition that this person is living with leads to low mood, which very understandably, it would be you are more likely to see those exclusions on an enhanced on an enhanced CI policy. Some insurers we talked about being in receipt of benefits, some automatically load for things like being in receipt of benefits. Some actually don’t even ask. So again, it’s about knowing the providers, or doing your pre sales research and knowing your customer properly, getting as much info as you can, and then talking to the providers about them. And I’m going to come back to that exclusion point. Let me forget this ties into the whole claims thing, but I’m going to talk about an IP yet. That’s why IP first. So IP is quite an easy one, in a sense, in that actually, if somebody has me slash, you know, chronic fatigue, it’s pretty much a decline across the board. If somebody has it active, getting checkups, taking medication, income protection is very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Now some people do, and I say inverted commas, recover from chronic fatigue, which they can sometimes, but it’s, I think it’s quite unusual, yeah. And actually, there’s another one called post viral fatigue, which is actually, you know, post virus version of this, which is why it’s interesting when you say it’s potentially in relation to a virus. But the idea is, post viral fatigue is that somebody would recover. So yeah, again, because there’s no blood test that tells you what you’ve got, well actually, did they actually have chronic fatigue, or did they have maybe post viral? And if someone’s got more than post viral, actually, they might get better from it, and then, therefore stops, stop having the symptoms in the future. So if somebody has not seen a GP, been discharged, not had any medication, not had any symptoms for a period of time, absolutely, you will then be able to open up doors again for IP, yeah, but I would say, whilst somebody has this as an ongoing condition that is treated, that there is impacting their work or that they are suffering from in any way or form. I would say that income protection is probably going to be a decline. You could look at accident only IP so that they covered for breaks and sprints and things like that. Or you could look at non underwritten accident and sickness cover so ASU style policies, the danger is pre existing health condition exclusion. You’ve already talked about quite a long list of things that could potentially be, as you know, attributed to this. So, you know, again, you’re thinking, how much left? What’s left to be covered? Exactly, exactly. So things like that. We’ve got to be very, very mindful of and very, very careful of,

 

Kathryn Knowles  19:57

I’ve got a compliance thing that’s just. Into my head. So I’m sorry, Alan, I’m compliance in you go for it, right? And you’ve not said anything wrong. But I just feel like we need to, I just need, I just need to say this basically. So you were saying that basically, if they’ve not been to the GP, they’ve not been medicated, they’ve not done this for a certain amount of time, then IP could be possible. What is incredibly essential for all advisors is do not get into that conversation with clients about, well, so if I just don’t see my GP for the next so many years, or this, I can potentially get this without, oh, without excluding I would just don’t get into it. Because ultimately, the you know, people would want this insurance, or we think that they would need the insurance, and we know it, and we’re trying to encourage them to have it. But nothing is more important than their health. So if they do have something like chronic fatigue, and they do need support, you know, it might be genuinely that they don’t, but if they are somebody that they are getting support, you know, things like that, it’s very similar, like genetic testing, you know, if somebody’s had some or there’s potentially a family history, that would mean that they’ll have an exclusion on kicking us. You know, they ask you for advice, saying, Well, do you think I should get the genetic testing? You just do not get involved in that conversation, because they’ll have already been offered it, and they’ve obviously decided not to have it up to that date. So you just be as supportive as possible. But just say, Look, you know, ultimately, if you need support from your GP, then you should be seeing your GP. You know the insurance, yes, is important, but your health comes first. So I was just, yeah,

 

Alan Knowles  21:31

no, so we are the financial doctors. We are not the medical doctors.

 

Kathryn Knowles  21:36

That’s married, that sounds really nerd.

 

Alan Knowles  21:40

So, yeah, absolutely, 100% right on that. And I think it’s just knowing our limits, yeah, and don’t get involved in that side. So I said claims, and obviously I also mentioned about when you talked about the exclusion wording. So this is quite an interesting and sorry, but it’s a bit geeky on my side with it. I guess when I say interesting. So when you get a mental health exclusion, on an income protection or on a critical illness policy, they are usually worded in the way of saying something like, we will not pay any claim for anything linked to stress, depression, anxiety or any other mental nervous or functional disorder, such as fibromyalgia, MECFS, you know, functional neurological disorder, etc, etc. And our functional disorder is something where there’s no medical proof, as such, there is a condition, but obviously it is affecting someone. Yeah, so this is a bit we’ve done a we did

 

Kathryn Knowles  22:36

a podcast once before on fnd, so functional neurological disorder, and it’s kind of like we know that the doctors have gone, we know there’s a neurological there’s a neurological disorder. We don’t know what it is, so we’re saying you’ve got a functional neurological disorder of some sort. Exactly.

 

Alan Knowles  22:49

Now I’ve, I’ve not seen any debated or contentious claims myself, for me, or CFS, which I say, oh, it’s the same condition. But you know which, which is fantastic. That’s really good. But interestingly, I mean, I would have in my head thought, well, actually, if there is no diagnosis for this, and no single thing that would you would lead to diagnosis, then I would say that is classed as functional but actually, when you look at it and you research the condition, it is classed as a neurological condition, not a functional disorder, but obviously the insurers seem to class it more as a functional disorder because they build it into the mental health exclusion. Now I’m not gonna I’m not saying whether I think that’s right or wrong. I completely understand both sides on that, but obviously think about a claim, and if somebody is trying to claim for chronic fatigue syndrome, they’ve never had anything for it before. They’ve got no exclusions on the policy. How do they prove that they have that condition? Now,

 

Kathryn Knowles  23:51

I was going to say that yeah, because it’s because, yeah, you don’t have that.

 

Alan Knowles  23:55

There’s no blood test to tell you if you’ve got it. And same for fibromyalgia, and again, that’s kind of probably part of the reason why they build it into the mental health exclusion when they do so, you know, claims will and should pay for CFS. It is a recognized medical condition, as is fibromyalgia, you know, long COVID, etc. And I have seen claims pay up for long COVID, and quite a lot of them as well. So this should link in more with that. But it is just one of those. To bear in mind that obviously, if you do have an IP claim for someone with chronic fatigue, might take a little bit longer, because obviously, might not be the smoothest claim. It’s not a clear cut, right? This person’s had cancer. This is a stage they cannot work. This is very much looking case by case at that individual. How is it affecting them? What have they tried through work? Were reasonable adjustments made, and everything

 

Kathryn Knowles  24:44

like that. So this has just brought something to the front of my mind that I think is really interesting. So our colleague, Annaliese, had a query from a client recently about the mental health exclusion definitions, and she started putting together this table, and she was contacting all the issues. I was, you know, get, let’s get the latest definitions and everything like that. And we were going through it, and she was actually, she goes, Well, I think this one’s best. And I was just like, but it’s kind of got a and, you know, it’s, it had hardly anything, you know, some of them are paragraphs, but one of them barely said anything in it, but it kind of said, or anything related. And you kind of like, well, what’s anything related? Because with the other ones, they’ve kind of almost, it’s kind of like, which one’s better? Is it better to have it all listed out, saying, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, all these other ones? And then you kind of like, like, that’s that. We know that there is. But when it’s like, are any related? It’s kind of like, well, does that mean that they would consider chronic fatigue is related because they’ve not specifically said it, but everyone else is saying that it’s related. Or could it be that actually the one that says or anything related actually excludes far more than the others because of the fact that it’s not being so specific. So it is really, really tricky, isn’t it? And I think, I think, from like, what you said as well, you know, in terms of this isn’t necessarily as relevant to people who have chronic fatigue already, because it is unlikely for them to get personal income protection. There are other ways of getting income protection that might work quite well for them, but obviously it’s very limited and it’s very specific eligibility factors and but in terms of the claims, yeah, I think it’s so important to be, you know, very, very aware that, you know, there are some claims that I think are pretty straightforward for the insurers. You know, if you take cancer as an example, you know, if it’s that staging, it’s that grading, you know, it’s it the insurer looks at their guy to say, Does this mean that we can pay Yes, whereas, when it’s something like you said, chronic fatigue, it’s almost like it’s a catch all statement, sometimes,

 

Alan Knowles  26:47

especially for TPD, so total permanent disability would be very, very difficult. And again, not saying it wouldn’t pay out for chronic fatigue, but you know, an income protection, temporarily out of work, ongoing assessment, fair enough. But actually, for CFS, you know, to be able to say, well, you are now permanently disabled and never able to work again. Yeah, that’s going to be again, a really tricky

 

Kathryn Knowles  27:09

one. Well, yeah, because, as well, it is potentially recoverable, potentially, you know, and it’s, it’s not easy, and it’s certainly not common, but it is something that is recoverable, okay, well, thank you for giving all that insight. I think we really, I think we really bounced off each other there. I’ve interrupted you quite a bit, so apologies for that. So I’ve got a couple of case studies, and then we’ll be finished. So first one is some of chronic fatigue, and they are unable to work due to the chronic fatigue. So during the early 40s, a non smoker, and they did need the life insurance. And so what was arranged for them was 60,000 pounds of level life insurance over 27 years, and that cost six pounds, 70 pence a month. I thought that was really important to bring here, based upon what we’ve said so far, in terms of, you know, if you’re not able to work, if you’re not able to do this kind of thing, that it can obviously have an impact. And you know, with this case, you know, I think it did influence it a bit, but it’s still just six pounds, 70. I mean, that sounds like standard reds to me. I think there was something, I think, you know, but, you know, it’s, it could well have been, yeah, but it is just something to sorry say that it might be that we’re saying that we’ve got these things to look out for, but looking out for something isn’t always sort of like doom and gloom. We’re going to end up getting the worst case possible. You know, it is just that. It’s something to be mindful of so that you can preempt the client as well. On the second case study, I had someone with chronic fatigue syndrome, full time employed. They were mid 30s. They were a non smoker, as well as having chronic fatigue they did have a cyst. It was located in the spine, brain area. They’d had pulmonary embolisms in both of their lungs. They had fibromyalgia, like we’ve been talking about, and polycystic ovary syndrome. Now this person needed 350,000 pounds of life insurance over 33 years, and that came in at a little under 53 pounds per month. So again, we’ve got a good mix there. We’ve got somebody where we’re saying, you know, they’ve not been able to work. We’ve got quite, quite a low premium, um, or then we’ve got somebody who can work. We’ve actually got quite a lot of, like we said, the comorbidities, and I still, I think we need to, we need to a poll

 

Alan Knowles  29:13

intertwined conditions. There we go. Oh,

 

Kathryn Knowles  29:16

that’s an, I don’t know. I don’t like that. That’s giving me a bit of a nick. I don’t know why we need to do some kind of poll as to what should be, what it should be called, and so, so there we go. So thank you everybody for listening. Thank you Alan for joining me. Welcome. Thank you for having me next time I’m going to be going through some IHT case studies and just giving some examples of different ways to look at IHT planning things that we might not be too familiar with things to look out for. If we are going into that kind of area of advice, please do visit the website, practical hyphen protection. Dot COVID UK, and don’t forget, if you’ve listened to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on the website too. Thanks to our sponsors, next gen planners. Thank you, Alan. See you soon. Bye. Everyone.

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