FAQ's

Income protection insurance is designed to offer security for the policy holder to keep paying necessary bills if they become unable to work due to injury or illness in the form of a monthly benefit amount. When considering if you might need income protection insurance, look at your regular monthly bills like: Household expenses, Credit card loans and School fees. If you add all of these up, could you or help from family or friends continue to afford these if you weren’t able to work?

Between 2017 and 2018, the HSE or Health and Safety Executive found that 15.4 million working days had been lost because of work-related stress, depression or anxiety. Further to this, in 2011, 31% of all claims with the insurer LV were for Mental Disorders like stress. Legal & General reported that mental health problems were the second most common cause of income protection claims in 2015, making up 22% of its claims with the insurer Aegon saying it accounted for 29% of claims in the same period.

When trying to take out Income Protection Insurance yourself, there is often a lot of confusion about policy options would be best and the costs of the premiums and cover. This article serves to clear up some of the confusion and help you understand the types of policies you can take out.

On average in the UK, the weekly household spend according to research done by the ONS is £554.20. This is spread across a wide variety of areas and you can look further in depth in the table below.

Group income protection insurance a policy that held and paid for by the employer. It is designed to support your employees’ financially if they are unable to work because of an illness or injury. This is good as it makes the long-term sickness absences more manageable, and helps to retain important employees. The benefits will be processed through the Pay-As-You-Earn system to the company so it becomes the responsibility of the employers to see that the benefit goes to the incapacitated employee or director.

Income Protection insurance exists to give you a degree of cover if you can’t work, due to either serious illness or injury. Would your savings or sick pay from work support you enough to pay the bills?

If you didn’t have income protection insurance, you would have to survive on whatever savings you had or the sick pay you receive from work. This would have to last you until you were able to return to work or even longer. Around one million workers a year (according to the ABI) become unable to work due to serious injury or illness.