Protection Planning for Individuals

What should I cover? 

Your personal circumstances will dictate what is appropriate for you at each stage of your life.

• As a single person, perhaps the most important concern is to protect your income in the event of a long term illness or disability.
• For a  couple  with a young family, this may change  with a mortgage needing to be protected against death or critical illness and income protected for the longer term against  illness.
• As we get older, the emphasis will change again with every scenario being different and personal.
• It is important for all of us to protect ourselves and our loved ones. After all we will insure our house, our belongings  and our cars- are we not more important than these material possessions??

The following gives a short summary of some of the types of protection available.

 Term Assurance

Term assurance pays a tax free lump sum in the event of death during a specified period in return for a fixed monthly, or annual, premium. At the end of the term the policy finishes and there is no maturity value. As a result this is the cheapest and simplest form of life cover available. The two main types of cover are level or decreasing. Decreasing cover is usually recommended to cover a repayment mortgage.  

 Family Income Benefit

Family Income Benefit is another form of term assurance. It will pay a regular monthly tax free income to your dependents in the event of death, for the remainder of the term of the policy. This is important cover for young families where there may be just one earner. The options on death of a partner may be either to give up work to look after the children or to pay for childcare. A non working partner can then have the option of staying home to bring up the children, without having the added stress of money problems.  It can be very useful cover for older people where a loss of regular income on a partner’s death could seriously restrict the remaining partners’ options.

 Whole of Life Cover

As the name suggests this type of cover is designed to run for your entire life and pays out a lump sum whenever you die. This type of cover is   more expensive than basic term assurance, as it includes an element of investment as well. The aim of the investment element is to provide a subsidy in later life to keep the cost of premiums lower.  Whole of life cover is often used to pay an inheritance tax bill on the second death.

 Critical Illness

Critical Illness  cover allows for a tax-free lump sum to be paid in the event of diagnosis of certain critical illnesses, such as heart attack, stroke, some forms of cancer, or major organ transplant.  A critical illness will affect one in three of us at some stage in our lives and is cover that is highly recommended by this company.

Income Protection

Income Protection Insurance is also known as Permanent Health Insurance. It provides a regular tax-free monthly income benefit to replace your earnings should you become unable to work due to illness or injury for a long time. The policy will continue to pay out until the end of the insured period or until you are able to start back to work. You are able to choose a deferred period of up to a year, to coincide with your employers sick pay arrangements.  The policy will start to pay out at the end of the deferred period.

We believe that this type of policy is very important for all working people. . 

Accident Sickness and Unemployment (ASU) 

ASU  insurance also protects a person's income   against illness or injury and also redundancy. Some ASU policies will also allow you to choose whether you want to receive benefits for accident and sickness only, unemployment only or all three. ASU benefits are usually payable for a maximum of 12 months. With ASU you are able to choose the amount of benefit you would like to receive within certain limits of the maximum amount.