Income Protection Insurance Cover Against Unemployment and Incapacity

Income protection insurance cover is taken out to safeguard the possibility that you could become unemployed or incapacitated at anytime. If you lost your income you would have to make drastic changes to your lifestyle in order to be able to continue paying all of your essential outgoings. One of the most important of these would be your monthly mortgage repayments as arrears leads to the lender taking you to court and seeking possession of your home.

Your policy would allow you to insure up to a certain amount of your own income and this is set out by the provider. You need to check this along with when the cover would begin to pay and when it would end. Some policies could state that you receive a payment after just 30 days and others could ask that you wait for as long as the 90th day before you put in a claim. The same would apply to how long the cover would provide you with an income for. Some providers could allow you to recover with peace of mind for 12 months and some providers might allow you 24 monthly payments. Once the period has been reached then the policy would simply cease and it is assumed that you would have recovered and gone back to work or found work again.

Income protection insurance cover would allow you to be able to pay more than just your mortgage repayments. You would also be able to keep up with any other essential outgoings which could include loan repayments. Being able to meet loan repayments is essential if you are to keep your credit rating on form. Your credit rating is the first thing taken into account when lenders look into deciding whether or not to take a risk on you. It is common sense that if you have a poor rating due to missed loan repayments that you are more than likely to be turned down. Even if you do manage to get a lender to agree to give you a loan you would probably have to pay over the odds for the rate of interest and might even have to take out a bad credit loan.

You would also have to check to see what exclusions there are in income protection insurance cover as some have more than others and these are set out by the provider. There are exclusions in all payment protection policies but some of the ethical providers add in just the bare few. The exclusions are what can stop you from being able to put in a successful claim on the policy. This was highlighted in 2005 when the Financial Services Authority revealed that policies had been mis-sold. While this referred mainly to loan payment protection, all policies were tarred with the same brush which led to mistrust and a decline in taking out all forms of protection. Providing you had read the terms and key facts and are aware of the exclusions and checked them then cover can and does work as it is supposed to work.

About the Author
Simon Burgess is Managing Director of the award-winning British Insurance, a specialist provider of income protection insurance cover.