Income Protection

Income Protection Plans or Permanent Health Insurance as it is sometimes called will pay out a percentage of your monthly income, tax free, until you can return to work. This will allow you to meet your mortgage payments or other liabilities you may have and provide you with an adequate level of income that you may not otherwise have.

The premiums that you pay are affected by your occupation, age, state of your health and the length of your waiting or "deferred" period. This is the time between you becoming ill or sustaining an injury and the first day that your claim benefit commences. Insurers offer deferred periods of 1, 3, 6, 12 or even 24 months. The longer the deferred period the lower the cost to you.

The policy is guaranteed to continue to your selected age, which may be your retirement date. Once you start receiving payments, they last until you return to work or your selected age. There is not normally a limit to the number of claims you can make, so if you suffer from many separate illnesses you are still covered.

There are different levels of cover and benefits to choose from. The options chosen will affect the monthly premiums. Level benefit sees the cover level remain the same throughout the claim period, meaning that your cover decreases in real terms. Escalating benefits sees your cover increase by an agreed amount per annum.

Policies for income protection insurance are offered in a highly competitive area within the insurance market, giving you a diversity of products, policies, benefits and optional extras. It is therefore important that you select the correct policy. At Professional Financial Services we offer specialist advice in this area and will take into consideration what policies you already have in place, to make sure there is no duplication or unnecessary coverage. Thus we help you obtain the best quotes and policies to suit your needs from the insurance companies we work with.