In plain English
If illness or injury stops you working, income protection pays you a monthly amount, usually a percentage of your salary, until you can go back to work or the policy ends. You choose how long to wait before payments start, often to line up with when your sick pay runs out. The longer you wait, the cheaper it is.
You rely on your salary to pay the bills and wouldn’t last long on savings or statutory sick pay.
Special plans for public sector workers, choosing your waiting period, and how it fits with your employer’s sick pay.
The details
If something happened to you, would you be able to survive on savings, or on sick pay from work? If not, you’ll need some other way to keep paying the bills and you might want to consider income protection insurance.
- It replaces part of your income if you can’t work because you become ill or disabled.
- It pays out until you can start working again, or until you retire, die or reach the end of the policy term, whichever is sooner.
- There’s often a waiting period before the payments start. You generally set payments to start after your sick pay ends, or after any other insurance stops covering you. The longer you wait, the lower the monthly premiums.
- It covers most illnesses that leave you unable to work, either in the short or long term (depending on the type of policy and its definition of incapacity).
- You can claim as many times as you need to while the policy lasts.
It’s not the same as short-term income protection, which also pays out a monthly sum related to your income, but only for a limited period of time (normally between two and five years) and can cover fewer illnesses or situations.
Questions people ask us
I work in the public sector. Is there anything different for me?
What’s a waiting period?
Can I claim more than once?
How is it different from critical illness cover?
How it works
- Drop us a message
- Have a proper chat
- We keep looking after you