General Insurance Article - Bowel Cancer Awareness: Importance of financial protection

 Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK, with around 110 cases diagnosed every day. One in 14 men and one in 19 women will be diagnosed with this type of cancer during their lifetime.

 Scottish Widows paid out more than £6.5 million in critical illness claims relating to bowel cancer in 2014, which accounted for 12 per cent of all cancer-related critical illness claims that year. The company’s data shows that the average age of diagnosis for bowel cancer among males in 2014 was 50, while the average age for females was 52. Just over half (56 per cent) of claimants were male.

 Survival is improving, however, and has more than doubled in the last 40 years. In the 1970s, more than a fifth of people diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK survived their disease beyond ten years; now it's almost six in 10. When diagnosed at its earliest stage, more than nine in 10 people will survive for five years or more.

 Scott Cadger, Head of Underwriting and Claims Strategy at Scottish Widows, said: ”As the rate of bowel cancer survival improves, the need for financial protection becomes increasingly strong. Research commissioned by Macmillan Cancer Support has revealed four in five people are, on average, £570 a month worse off as a result of their cancer diagnosis.

 “It’s astonishing, therefore, that fewer than one in 10 of the population have critical illness insurance, and only a third have life cover. It’s at times like this that families need to do all they can to protect themselves in the event that the unexpected happens.”