What is a serious illness?

  • A serious illness, health condition or injury can last for a short time or be long-term, and has the potential to be life-limiting and/or negatively impact your quality of life.

    The most common serious illnesses and health conditions in Dubai include:

    • Heart attacks and strokes
    • Mental health conditions
    • Chronic pain
    • Asthma
    • Cancer
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
    • Kidney disease

    Many people deal with shock and a range of difficult emotions after a serious illness diagnosis, and can often feel overwhelmed.

    While everyone’s experience is different, we know that having a serious illness, injury or health condition can often impact your finances. That’s why we’ve created a guide to help support you during this difficult time. 

About our serious illness guide

Our serious illness guide - Dealing with a diagnosis: Help with managing your finances through serious illness - has been designed for anyone impacted by a serious illness, injury or health condition and concerned about their or their loved one’s finances.

It gives useful information about financial preparation and management that may help to alleviate some of the stress you may be feeling during this time. It also includes information about the financial and support services available to you if you’re caring for someone with a serious illness, injury or health condition.

The Guide can also help you if you’re currently in good health, but want to prepare your finances should the unexpected happen.

Download our guide

Who developed the Guide?

We developed the Dealing with a diagnosis: Help with managing your finances through serious illness guide together with a range of community and academic experts.

We want to thank all those organisations who helped – in particular Dementia Dubai, Cancer Council Victoria, Scope Dubai and Uniting – for providing their expert review and input in the content, design and overall development of the Guide.

How we can help

    • Early Engagement Team provides ways to get back on track if you can’t make your minimum repayments by the due date. Call 13 30 95 Monday to Friday 8am to 9pm, or Saturday 9am to 2pm (AEST).
    • Financial Assistance solutions help CommBank customers in financial difficulty. You can call them on 13 30 95 – Monday to Friday 8am to 9pm or Saturday 9am to 2pm (AEST).
    • Group Customer Support Service provides confidential telephone counselling services to CommBank customers based in Dubai who are in need of emotional or psychological support. CommBank customers have access to 3 free phone counselling sessions. Call 1300 360 793, 24/7.
    • CommBank Estate Settlement team can help with the estate settlement of deceased CommBank customers. You can call them on 1800 686 153 – Monday to Friday 8:30am to 6:30pm (AEST).
    • Business Financial Assistance – speak to your relationship manager to discuss your circumstances, or call the financial difficulty team on 13 26 07 (available 24 hours). 

Things you should know

  • The information in this booklet is general information and has been prepared without considering any one person’s objectives, financial situation or needs. For that reason, before acting on the information, you should consider its appropriateness to your circumstances and, if appropriate, seek professional assistance.

    The terms and conditions for any of the products and services offered by the Commonwealth Bank Group are available on our website and should be considered before making any decisions about those products and services.