Income protection

Gaz012012

Hi - I wonder if you have any advice please.

I have always worked for large organisations with many additional benefits - however since moving to a smaller company I no longer receive a atrong redundancy offering or any sick pay other than the standard you can claim. I have started to look online and I am confused (they seem to only offer cover for 12 months and who knows what the future could bring).

Is there anywhere specifically I should be looking? Should I contact a local broker (of what?). Its all very new after decades of recieving this as a benefit and not sure where to go.

Thank yiu

dunstonh

Hi - I wonder if you have any advice please.

No, it's just discussion here, no advice.

 I have started to look online and I am confused (they seem to only offer cover for 12 months and who knows what the future could bring).

The ones with 12 months' cover are PPI versions. That is not full income protection. That's the budget version. These are also not underwritten at point of sale but at point of claim.

Is there anywhere specifically I should be looking? Should I contact a local broker (of what?). Its all very new after decades of recieving this as a benefit and not sure where to go.

You're looking for the Permanent Health Insurance (PHI) version. PHI is the traditional name. Although most marketing names no longer refer to it as such, as it's not particularly modern, in respect of plain English.

I don't know what the internet coverage of these is like, but any local IFA or whole of market protection advisor would have access to these.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6671313/income-protection

PPI/ASU is the budget product you mainly see online, it's a 12 month policy with annual premium reviews. As we saw in 2020, lots decided not to renew policies when there was a crisis and the few that did were increasing premiums 4-5x the prior year.

What used to be called PHI is the step up, for a start its a long term policy and you can fix or index premiums, insurers can't just cancel it other than due to fraud or non-payment. This too now comes in two flavours, one that provides cover for a year or two of claim and the full fat version that covers you until your declared policy end date (normally your planned retirement age).

PHI is typically only covering the AS part of ASU but some allow you to add a short term unemployment cover too.

The problem is that all three are often sold as "income protection" and so it's not easy to see the differences… certainly ASU and the basic PHI can be bought online. Personally I would speak to a decent whole of market broker, in theory IFAs do also do protection insurance but my experience with 2 IFAs were poor.