Legal & General paid out £422,500 in Children’s Critical Illness Cover (CCIC) claims for leukaemia in 2014, it has revealed.

This equates to more than a quarter of the total amount – £1.6 million – paid out in CCIC claims last year. Not a single CCIC claim for leukaemia was declined by the insurer.

It released the statistics to raise awareness of leukaemia in recognition of September’s National Leukaemia Awareness month.

There are up to 400 new diagnoses for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (the most common form of childhood leukaemia) every year in the UK, in children aged from 0 to 14. More than half of these patients are under the age of 5, so perhaps unsurprisingly the average age of children Legal & General received leukaemia claims for was 6, with the youngest being just 2 years old.

Legal & General’s CCIC product covers the children of Critical Illness Cover policy holders from when they’re 30 days old to their 18th birthday, or 21st birthday if they’re in full-time education. The policy pays cover of 50% of the sum assured, up to a maximum of £25,000. They added additional benefits for CCIC in 2013 to help their customers even more and these include Child Accident Hospitalisation Benefit (£5,000), Child Funeral Benefit (£4,000) and Childcare Benefit (£1,000).

Often child leukaemia cases involve the child being hospitalised for treatment and Legal & General further help claimants in this situation with their Family Accommodation additional benefit which pays £100 per night to families for every night the child is in hospital following their diagnosis (up to a maximum of £1,000), in addition to the sum assured.

Mark Holweger (pictured), managing director of intermediated at Legal & General, said: “Child leukaemia is not uncommon and we understand the distress children’s critical illness cover claims can have on a family. This is why we ensure that our staff on the frontline are specifically trained to deal with such cases, and why we strive to pay as many claims as possible, exemplified by our 2014 claims record for children with leukaemia.

“Our additional benefit payments such as the Family Accommodation Benefit, are designed to further ease the burden families may experience from (in this case) a child being hospitalised for a period of time.”