Aviva critical illness cover review 2026

Critical illness cover pays a lump sum if you’re diagnosed during the policy term with a serious illness the policy names. Each illness has a written definition, and your diagnosis has to meet it before the policy pays.

The Critical Illness Plan pays your cover amount as a cash lump sum if, during the policy term, you’re diagnosed with a critical illness that meets Aviva’s policy definition and you survive for at least 10 days. It only covers the illnesses the policy defines. Some conditions pay out on diagnosis; for others, the condition must have reached a certain level or you must have had a named treatment.

It pays the full cover amount once, and the policy then ends. A joint policy also pays out only once: it ends when Aviva accepts a claim for one of you. The plan doesn’t pay out if you die, but on a joint policy, if one of you dies without being eligible to claim, the cover can continue for the other person.

It isn’t a savings or investment product: it only pays out on a successful claim. If you stop paying your premiums or cancel, the policy ends and you get nothing back.

The Critical Illness Plan won’t pay out if:

• you’re diagnosed with an illness the policy doesn’t define, or your diagnosis doesn’t meet the definition in the policy conditions
• you’re diagnosed outside the policy term, or you don’t survive for 10 days after diagnosis
• you die
• your policy has ended because you stopped paying premiums, or it has been cancelled
• you didn’t answer all the application questions completely, truthfully and accurately

Full list of conditions covered

The Critical Illness Plan covers 52 conditions. Aviva’s policy summary lists 41 critical illnesses, which pay your full cover amount, and 11 additional critical illnesses, which pay a smaller amount and leave your policy running. Here they are as the summary groups them, with Aviva’s short description of each. Where the summary gives no description, we show the main point of the definition in the policy conditions.

Aviva says this list is only a guide: the policy conditions set out the full definition of each illness and when you can claim.

Aviva’s cancer definition covers any malignant tumour confirmed by histology, with uncontrolled growth of malignant cells and invasion of tissue. It doesn’t cover less advanced cases: for example, cancers classified as pre-malignant, non-invasive or in situ, prostate tumours unless they have a Gleason score of 7 or above or have reached a set stage, melanoma confined to the outer layer of skin, and non-melanoma skin cancers unless they’ve spread to lymph nodes or distant organs.

Some less advanced cancers that the main cancer definition excludes are covered as additional critical illnesses instead, for a smaller amount: carcinoma in situ of the breast that needs surgery to remove the tumour, low-grade prostate cancer with specified treatment, carcinoma in situ of the cervix treated with a hysterectomy, and carcinoma in situ of the testicle that needs removal of one or both testicles.

For an additional critical illness, you also need to be diagnosed during the policy term and survive for 10 days. Each person covered can claim once for each one, and the policy then carries on without reducing later payments. You can’t claim one if you’ve already claimed, or are eligible to claim, the full critical illness benefit.

Children’s cover is included. It covers your natural, step and legally adopted children, including future children, from 30 days old to their 18th birthday, or their 21st in full-time education. If a child is diagnosed with one of the critical illnesses or additional critical illnesses above, apart from terminal illness, and survives for 10 days, the plan pays the lower of £25,000 or 50% of your cover. It pays £5,000 if a child dies during the policy term, on top of any children’s critical illness payment.

Aviva accepts one children’s critical illness claim per child, and doesn’t pay for a condition that was present at birth or whose symptoms started before the child was covered. A children’s claim doesn’t end your policy or reduce what it pays later.

We didn’t find published price examples for the Critical Illness Plan, so we don’t show any. The way to find out what you’d pay is to get a quote.

Aviva says your monthly premium depends on things like your personal circumstances, medical history, policy term and the level of cover you choose. Its policy conditions say personal circumstances can include your age, whether you smoke or have smoked, your health and your lifestyle.

With level or decreasing cover, your premium is guaranteed: it stays the same for the whole policy unless you make a change. With decreasing cover, the payout falls every month, broadly in line with a repayment loan such as a mortgage, and Aviva says it’s generally cheaper than level cover.

With increasing cover, your cover goes up each year in line with the Consumer Prices Index, by up to 10%, and your premium by 1.5 times the CPI increase, by no more than 15% a year. Aviva contacts you at least eight weeks before each increase. You don’t answer more health questions, and you can turn an increase down, in which case your cover and premium stay the same for that year.

You pay monthly by Direct Debit. The policy summary includes a sample premium, but only to show how increasing cover works, so we don’t show it as a price. If you already have an Aviva-branded product, Aviva takes 10% off your new premium when you buy directly, subject to a minimum premium and product exclusions.

Our critical illness calculator can help you work out how much cover you might need before you get quotes.

You can start a critical illness claim with Aviva’s online form, or by phone on 0800 015 1142 if you bought your policy from Aviva. It helps to have your contact details, basic information about your condition, your policy number and your GP’s and consultant’s contact details ready. Aviva usually pays a successful claim within five working days, and if it can’t pay, it explains why.

Critical illness, children’s benefit and TPD claims Aviva paid in 2025, across all its individual policies

90.7%

Paid on 5,586 of these claims in 2025

£388.6m

Average payout on these claims in 2025

£69,559

These figures cover all of Aviva’s individual critical illness claims, including children’s benefit, total permanent disability and Aviva Protection UK (former AIG Life) policies, not the Critical Illness Plan alone. From 2020 to 2025, Aviva paid between 90.7% and 93.5% of its individual critical illness claims (including children’s benefit and TPD) each year, including 91.5% in 2024 and 91.6% in 2023.

Of the 2025 claims, including children’s benefit, 9.3% weren’t paid: 5.2% because the policy definition wasn’t met, 3.9% because of misrepresentation and 0.2% for other reasons. Aviva says most of the claims it couldn’t pay were because the diagnosis didn’t meet the policy definition for the condition.

Cancer was the most common reason for a claim in 2025 (54.8%), followed by heart attack (8.7%) and stroke (6.7%). Aviva also paid £1,337,042 on 67 claims for less advanced cancers, and its largest critical illness claim was £1.4m.

Before paying a Critical Illness Plan claim, Aviva assesses it and asks for some important information, and it pays for any information it asks for from third parties. It relies on what it’s told: if any of the information is untrue or incomplete, it may not pay the claim.

If you’re not sure whether your condition is covered, Aviva suggests checking your policy booklet. In its 2026 claims report for advisers, Aviva says it has partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support, so someone making a cancer claim can speak to a Macmillan Clinical Nurse Specialist instead of waiting for a GP’s report, which helps Aviva settle the claim more quickly.

Claims figures from Aviva’s individual protection claims statistics for 2025.

The Critical Illness Plan is standalone critical illness cover you can buy directly from Aviva. It covers 52 conditions: 41 that pay your full cover amount, and 11 additional conditions that pay a smaller amount and let the policy carry on. Children’s cover is included, and premiums for level and decreasing cover are guaranteed.

The main limits are that it pays the full amount only once and then ends, doesn’t pay out if you die, needs you to survive for 10 days after diagnosis and has to end before you turn 76. It has no cash-in value, and it can’t be put in an Aviva Trust.

Through a financial adviser, Aviva also sells Critical Illness+ and Life Insurance+ with critical illness cover. Defaqto rates these 5 stars, against 3 or 4 stars for the Critical Illness Plan, and they have extras you can pay to add, such as extra care cover and fracture cover.

Whether a policy suits you depends on the conditions you want covered, how much cover you need and for how long, and whether you also need life insurance.

Critical illness policies differ in the conditions they cover, how they define them, whether they make smaller payments for less serious conditions and whether children are covered, so it’s worth comparing the definitions as well as the price.

When you compare policies, check how many conditions pay the full amount, how the main ones such as cancer, heart attack and stroke are defined, how long you need to survive after diagnosis, what children’s cover pays and whether premiums are guaranteed.

On the Critical Illness Plan, 41 conditions pay the full cover amount and 11 additional conditions pay the lower of £25,000 or 25% of your cover, or £20,000 or 20%. You need to survive for 10 days after diagnosis, children’s cover pays the lower of £25,000 or 50% of your cover, and level and decreasing premiums are guaranteed.

Aviva’s other routes work differently. Life Insurance+, sold through advisers, can combine life and critical illness cover in one policy: it includes death, terminal illness and critical illness benefits, covers 32 critical illness conditions and two additional conditions as standard, and a single or first event joint policy ends when Aviva accepts a claim for one of the main benefits. Quotemehappy.com, a trading name of Aviva Life & Pensions UK Limited, sells a Critical Illness Policy you can apply for with its life insurance: it covers 33 critical illnesses, needs 21 days’ survival after diagnosis and goes up to £500,000.

If you want life insurance as well, how the two are linked matters. Aviva explains that on a joint policy, if your critical illness cover is independent of your life insurance, your life cover continues for both of you after a critical illness claim as long as you keep paying; with integrated life and critical illness cover, life cover ends for both of you once the claim is paid.

Our critical illness calculator can help you estimate how much cover you might need.

Our guide to critical illness cover explains how this type of cover works and lists the insurers in our reviews that offer it, alphabetically.

Other insurers’ critical illness cover guides

• Legal & General critical illness cover
• NatWest critical illness cover
• Royal Bank of Scotland critical illness cover
• Vitality critical illness cover
• Zurich critical illness cover

Read our full Aviva life insurance review, or see all our insurer reviews.

This guide is for general information only. Life Cover Quotes does not endorse any specific insurance company or policy.