At GWM, we advise that your personal protection should cover all liabilities plus three years expenditure. As experienced financial advisers, we wholeheartedly believe that you should practice what you preach. One year ago, I returned to work after taking 9 months off unexpectedly. This could have been a very costly period if it wasn’t for my critical illness cover – here is my story.

On a Sunday afternoon in February 2021, I completed a 5 mile walk and all was good, or so I thought. It had been a busy few days during lockdown with a Zoom family birthday party which turned out to be a bit more stressful than expected. That night, I sat down to watch a film like I usually do. A few minutes later my wife was dialling 999 as I was unresponsive. The next thing I knew I was playing cricket on a huge yacht in the West Indies. The reality was that I was being brought out of an induced coma in Wexham Park Hospital – it was now Friday!

During that night, it transpires that I’d suffered from SCA (sudden cardiac arrest). My wife performed CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) for 7 minutes until the ambulance arrived. In total there were around 10 medical personnel including paramedics and air ambulance that came to my aid. Following 5 attempts to restart my heart, they finally managed to get a viable response. From dialling 999 to getting a response took approximately 20 minutes. After two weeks in hospital and having an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) fitted, it was time to go home. With an 8% survival rate for out of hospital SCA’s it really is amazing that I’m here to tell the tale.

At this stage, I’m so grateful that I took my own advice and had sufficient critical illness cover in place to pay off the mortgage and have one year’s salary to put in the bank. GWM were there to support my wife in finding the documents, contacting the providers, and aiding with the claims procedure whilst offering valuable support in the early difficult weeks.

With the lump sum pay out from my critical illness cover we were able to meet our household finances for the entire time I was off work. There was a lot of upheaval during this time and receiving the lump sum meant we could cover everything we needed to, including any unexpected expenses. This meant I didn’t need to rush back to work and had plenty of time to recover.

The pay out from my critical illness cover relieved a huge amount of stress for our family during a long and challenging recovery period. The peace of mind in knowing that my time off work was not impacting our finances enabled me to focus on getting better day-by-day and ultimately helped me to recover more quickly. Thankfully, I was able to return to work after 9 months. In addition, the lump sum payment enabled us to pay off the mortgage.

From personal experience I can only stress the value and importance of having the right cover in place at the right time.

PLEASE NOTE: Grosvenor Wealth Management Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The information contained in within this article is for guidance only and does not constitute advice which should be sought before taking any action or inaction.