If your health is preventing you from working, either for an employer or for your own business, you need a Plan B. Fortunately there are a plethora of insurance products to choose from, including income protection, critical illness cover and life insurance. These policies can help provide financial security for you and your family should you become incapable of performing work due to ill health. This becomes even more important if you’re self-employed, as there’s no employer to give you severance pay when you’re your own boss. As COVID-19 continues to show us, life is unpredictable. Accidents or illness can strike at any time, robbing us of our health and even our lives. That usually has a huge knock-on effect for our financial circumstances and the long-term security our families rely on, so let’s look at your options.
Income protection
Whether you’re self-employed or employed, an income protection policy could give you peace of mind. These types of policies are designed to pay out a regular income if you’re unable to work due to illness, injury, or redundancy. Short-term income protection can be helpful if you’re self-employed and don’t have the employee benefit of statutory sick pay. Longer-term income protection provides regular payments, based on a proportion of your income, if you’re incapable of working for an extended period of time. The payments often last until you’re well enough to return to work, or until the policy term ends. You can claim this as many times as you require while the policy lasts.
Critical illness cover
If there’s anything COVID-19 has taught us, illness or injury can rule anyone out from working for months on end in the worst-case scenarios. Critical illness cover can pay out a tax-free lump sum if you are diagnosed with certain illnesses listed in the policy. Typically, these include most forms of cancer, heart attack and stroke. Your policy is usually based on how long you want your cover to last, and how much you want to pay each month. Most people have this cover in place for as long as they still have significant demands on their income.
Life insurance
Sorry for referring to COVID-19 once again, but the very threat of this virus has put the spotlight back on having a sufficient protection net in place. Central to that is life cover, which is a type of insurance policy that can provide financial support to your loved ones. Life cover usually pays out a cash lump sum to the people closest to you if you die while covered by the policy. The lump sum is often used to pay off a mortgage to ensure your family can keep their home, or to replace your income.
Which cover do you require?
With thousands of protection insurance policies to choose from, there’s no substitute for the professional advice we offer at Roebuck. We can assist with all-round financial security or arrange protection for your family during turbulent times. Get in touch to find out more.