Cancer has changed. Advice must continue to evolve

Ask most advisers how cancer has traditionally shown up in a financial plan and the answer is usually the same.  A diagnosis. A claim. A line drawn under it.

But that isn’t the reality many clients are living now.

The Living with and beyond cancer in 2045 report, developed by Scottish Widows in partnership with Macmillan, shows that cancer is increasingly something people live with, not simply something they move past. And that small change in language has big consequences for advice.

Survival rates are improving. Earlier diagnosis and advances in treatment mean more people are living longer after cancer. That is genuinely good news.

But the financial story doesn’t always get the same attention as the medical one.

By 2045, the number of people living with cancer across the UK is projected to rise from around 3.4 million today to more than 5 million. That increase is driven less by rising incidence and more by longer survival. Among working age adults, the shift is particularly pronounced.¹

In practical terms, that means more people managing cancer alongside employment, family life, mortgages and long term financial commitments. That’s not a footnote to planning. It changes the centre of it.

Much of the industry’s thinking has traditionally focused on incidence, the likelihood of someone developing cancer. Prevalence asks a different question: what does life look like after diagnosis?

Living longer with cancer often brings periods away from work, reduced earning capacity, ongoing treatment and travel costs, and increased reliance on informal care. Over time, it can also accelerate the need for formal care support, often earlier than clients expect. And crucially, the financial impact rarely arrives as one neat event. It tends to land in phases, an initial shock, followed by the longer tail of income disruption and adjustment.

That’s why, in real life, advisers often see the strongest outcomes when different forms of protection work together. Immediate support at diagnosis can provide breathing space, while income resilience matters just as much in the months and years that follow, as clients find a new rhythm.

When longer term care enters the picture, many clients are surprised by how quickly responsibility falls back on them. State funding only becomes available once assets fall below £23,500², leaving many households exposed for longer than they realise. These are not extreme scenarios. They are increasingly common ones.

Yet many protection strategies were built around a far more binary view of cancer, one decisive moment, one financial response. Advisers know the reality is often messier: diagnosis, treatment, recovery, sometimes recurrence,  with finances that need to keep working through all of it.

Medical progress has moved quickly. Financial plans haven’t always kept up.

As prevalence rises, advisers will increasingly encounter clients whose financial arrangements were never designed to support years, sometimes decades, of life after cancer. That gap doesn’t show up at the point of diagnosis. It emerges gradually, through income disruption, depleted savings and growing care needs. It’s also where “either/or” thinking around protection can quietly fall down. A lump sum can help at the start, but it doesn’t replace a pay packet for months on end. Income can steady a household, but it won’t always cover the immediate costs and decisions people face at diagnosis.

This is where prevalence data earns its keep. It gives advisers credible, long range evidence to have richer conversations earlier and to review protection in a way that reflects how people actually live today.

Seen through a Consumer Duty lens, this is difficult to brush aside. The trends highlighted in the data are not speculative. They are foreseeable. Advisers now have access to robust evidence showing how cancer survivorship is changing and what that means for financial risk over time.

Using that insight isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about making sure plans still work when life doesn’t behave neatly.

This report exists because Scottish Widows chose to go deeper. By combining long term actuarial modelling with Macmillan’s deep understanding of what it means to live with cancer, we’ve been able to build a picture that reflects both the data and the lived experience behind it.

The result is insight designed to support better conversations, not just about claims, but about how people live, work and plan for the future in the years that follow a diagnosis. And when those conversations land well, they tend to land in the same place: building resilience that can handle both the immediate impact of cancer and the longer financial knock on effects that come with living beyond it.

Because protection isn’t only about what happens at the point of claim. It’s about what happens in all the years around it.

The future described by the prevalence data is already arriving in client books across the country.

Cancer has changed.

Life after cancer has changed.

The question is whether advice conversations evolve quickly enough to reflect that reality.

Living with and beyond cancer in 2045

Scottish Widows and Macmillan Cancer Support have produced the most comprehensive projection report to date on people living with cancer in the UK, offering unparalleled insight into how advances in survival rates and treatments are set to shape the next two decades. Download our new report today to understand how these changes will impact your clients - helping you stay informed and prepared for what lies ahead.

Living with and beyond cancer in 2045 (PDF, 1MB)
 

Sources:

¹Living with and beyond cancer in 2045 – Cancer Prevalence Report: Scottish Widows & Macmillan Cancer Support. Actuarial modelling and lived‑experience insight projecting UK cancer prevalence to 2045. February, 2026

²Gov. UK: Social care - charging for care and support 2025 to 2026: local authority circular, February, 2025