Critical illness sales hold up in recession: Defaqto

It said although mortgage-related critical illness sales had declined by 19.5 per cent, total critical illness sales had fallen only by 4.7 per cent.

Ben Heffer, insight analyst at Defaqto, said: "Protection policies are 'sold' not 'bought' and protection advisers have simply had to work harder for their sales.

"Advisers have had to increase their sales efforts to counter the difficult conditions caused by the recession and householders' desire to rein in spending."

He added: "As the UK emerges from recession, protection advice remains as important as ever but critical illness is a complicated product and advisers have to work harder to communicate the positives - the long term value and benefits, the improving claims statistics and the new product innovations such as the provision of health and wellbeing services."

Mr Heffer said there were signs of 'condition inflation' - resulting in increasing numbers of critical illnesses being added to policies.

He said: "This does add further complexity but advisers should not overlook that the policy with the greatest number of conditions may not really represent the best value for their client.

"The value of a critical illness policy is invested in the quality of the definitions and not simply in the number of conditions covered."