Life Insurance
Protect you and your family
Not everyone needs life insurance (also known as life cover and death cover). But if your children, partner or other relatives depend on your income to cover the mortgage, any other unsecured finance or other living expenses, then the answer is yes – you probably do want life insurance, since it will help provide for your family in the event of your death.
Life insurance can pay your dependants money as a lump sum or as regular payments if you die. It’s designed to provide you with the reassurance that your dependants will be looked after if you’re no longer there to provide.
The amount of money paid out depends on the level of cover you buy. You decide how it is paid out and whether it will cover specific payments, such as a mortgage.
Term life insurance policies: run for a fixed period of time (known as the ‘term’ of your policy) – such as 5, 10 or 25 years.
These kinds of policies only pay out if you die during the policy. There’s no lump sum payable at the end of the policy term. Life insurance usually only covers death – if you can’t provide for your family because of illness or disability, you won’t be covered.
Some life insurance policies provide a terminal benefit, although these are not automatically granted. A terminal benefit will pay out on diagnosis of a terminal illness. Check the terms and conditions of your policy to see if you’re covered.
Most policies have some exclusions (things they don’t cover). For example, they might not pay out if you die due to drug or alcohol abuse, and you normally have to pay extra to be covered when you take part in risky sports. If you have a serious health problem when you take out the policy, your insurance might exclude any cause of death related to that illness. You can’t rely on the government to take care of your family – the money they would get from the state is much lower than you’d probably expect. If you want to provide for your family financially if you die, think about getting life insurance.
Did You Know?
More than 25% of men in the UK will die before their state retirement age and sadly, 34 in 1000 men will die by their 40th birthday. For women, the numbers are different - 16% of women in the UK will die before their state retirement age however, 19 in 1000 women will die by their 40th birthday.
Data taken from the ONS
Critical Illness Cover
Additional Information
This is a long form text area designed for your content that you can fill up with as many words as your heart desires. You can write articles, long mission statements, company policies, executive profiles, company awards/distinctions, office locations, shareholder reports, whitepapers, media mentions and other pieces of content that don’t fit into a shorter, more succinct space.
Articles – Good topics for articles include anything related to your company – recent changes to operations, the latest company softball game – or the industry you’re in. General business trends (think national and even international) are great article fodder, too.
Mission statements – You can tell a lot about a company by its mission statement. Don’t have one? Now might be a good time to create one and post it here. A good mission statement tells you what drives a company to do what it does.
Company policies – Are there company policies that are particularly important to your business? Perhaps your unlimited paternity/maternity leave policy has endeared you to employees across the company. This is a good place to talk about that.
Executive profiles – A company is only as strong as its executive leadership. This is a good place to show off who’s occupying the corner offices. Write a nice bio about each executive that includes what they do, how long they’ve been at it, and what got them to where they are.
Income Protection
What's the difference between Income Protection and Life Insurance?
Income protection insurance (sometimes known as permanent health insurance) is a long-term insurance policy designed to help you if you can’t work because you’re ill or injured, but it shouldn't be confused with life insurance.
Income protection ensures you continue to receive a regular income until you retire or are able to return to work.
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, death or 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 doesn’t matter whether or not you have children or other dependants – if illness would mean you couldn’t pay the bills, you should consider income protection insurance.
Did You Know?
Each year, one million people in the UK find themselves unable to work due to a serious illness or injury (ABI 2017).
Insurers pay out £13.9m per day in income protection, critical illness cover and life assurance which adds up to over £5 billion per year.
Overall, virtually all protection insurance claims (97.8%) were paid in 2017.
You’re most likely to need it if you’re self-employed or employed and you don’t have unlimited sick pay to fall back on.