Free, friendly protection advice

“Protection” is the umbrella term for insurance policies that pay out if something happens to your health or your life. The unexpected can still happen. What protection does is stop it turning into a financial crisis as well. A good way to think about it: if you couldn’t work or weren’t around, would the people who rely on you be okay financially?

Cost depends on your age, health, whether you smoke, how much cover you want and how long you want it for. As a starting point, it’s worth thinking about the size of your mortgage or outstanding debts, how many years of income your family would need replacing and what savings you already have as a buffer. It’s also worth thinking about your monthly budget and how much you might be able to spend on protection, as you may need to prioritise one type of cover over another.

In many cases, yes. Cover and pricing will reflect your circumstances, and some conditions may be excluded or cost more to insure against. Our advisers will help you think through your options. For some niche health conditions, the right cover may sit with specialist insurers we don’t advise on. If that’s the case, we’ll tell you and point you in the right direction.

When you apply, you’ll be asked about your health, your family’s medical history, your job and things like smoking, alcohol and hobbies. Answer everything as fully and accurately as you can, including anything you’re unsure about.

Incomplete or inaccurate information at the application stage is one of the most common reasons a claim is turned down. It’s rarely deliberate. People forget an old condition or assume something is too minor to mention. If in doubt, declare it. Telling the insurer more than they strictly need costs you nothing, and it means the cover you’re paying for will do its job when you come to use it.

It’s a fair question to ask, and the industry-wide answer is that the large majority do. According to the Association of British Insurers, 97.9% of individual protection claims were paid in 2025, with £7.84 billion paid out across individual and group protection policies that year. The proportion paid has stayed at or above that level for more than a decade.

Where a claim isn’t paid, it’s usually for one of two reasons: something wasn’t disclosed on the application, or the thing being claimed for isn’t covered by the policy. This is most common with critical illness cover, where only the specific conditions listed in your policy count. Both are largely avoidable, and both are things worth getting right at the outset rather than discovering them at claim time.

Source: Association of British Insurers, protection claims data for 2025 (published June 2026).

UK insurers are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, and have to hold enough capital to meet the commitments they’ve made. If an authorised UK insurer did fail, long-term insurance policies, including life cover, critical illness cover and income protection, are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme at 100% of the claim, with no upper limit. In practice, policies are more often transferred to another insurer than simply stopped.

Speak to your insurer or your adviser before you cancel anything. Missing a single payment doesn’t usually end the policy. Insurers normally allow a short grace period and will contact you first. And there are often ways to keep some cover in place rather than losing it altogether: reducing the amount of cover, shortening the term or dropping one element of a combined policy.

The important thing to understand is that these are protection policies, not savings. If a policy lapses, there’s no cash value to get back. And if you reapply later you’ll be older, and your health may have changed, so the same cover will usually cost more. That’s a good reason to set your cover at a level you can comfortably keep paying, rather than the maximum you could stretch to today.

Every couple of years is a sensible rhythm, plus any time something significant changes. The usual triggers are moving house or remortgaging, having a child, getting married or separating, a change in income or employment, taking on or clearing a large debt, or a change to the benefits your employer provides.

Cover set a few years ago may no longer fit. It can be too little if your mortgage and family have grown, or more than you need if the mortgage is nearly paid off. A review doesn’t mean replacing what you’ve got. Existing cover is often worth keeping, precisely because you were younger and healthier when you took it out, and replacing it would cost more.

This FAQ gives general information to help you understand the basics. It isn’t personal advice, and it isn’t a recommendation of any specific product or provider. The right cover depends on your income, dependents, debts, health and budget, so it’s worth talking to a protection adviser who can look at your full picture before you decide. You can start with a free initial session, a general conversation to help understand your protection needs. This session does not count as regulated advice. Where it’s appropriate, regulated advice follows on from that conversation.

No. There’s no fee for our protection advice. If you go ahead and take out a policy, we’re paid a commission by the insurer, which is already built into the premium quoted to you. If you don’t take out a policy, you pay nothing.

We advise on a panel of ten of the twelve largest protection insurers in the UK, which covers the large majority of the market. That’s broad enough to compare cover and price properly, so we can give you a fair and personal assessment. Occasionally, particularly with unusual health conditions or occupations, the most suitable option sits with a specialist insurer outside our panel. If that’s the case, we’ll tell you and point you in the right direction.

Before your session, it helps to:

• Think about your needs: if you couldn’t work or passed away, who and what would benefit from a protection policy?
• Consider your budget: insurance premiums are typically paid monthly, so it’s worth knowing roughly how much you could afford to spend each month.
• Check your employee benefits: some employers offer death in service benefits or income protection. Your needs may go beyond what these cover, but it helps to know what’s already in place before your appointment.

Before your session, it helps to:

• Think about your needs: if you couldn’t work or passed away, who and what would benefit from a protection policy?
• Consider your budget: insurance premiums are typically paid monthly, so it’s worth knowing roughly how much you could afford to spend each month.
• Check your employee benefits: some employers offer death in service benefits or income protection. Your needs may go beyond what these cover, but it helps to know what’s already in place before your appointment.

Life insurance pays a lump sum, or sometimes a regular income, to your family when you die.

On its own, life insurance doesn’t help if you’re alive but unable to work. That’s what critical illness cover and income protection are for.

No. UK lenders don’t generally require life insurance as a condition of a mortgage, and a lender can’t insist you buy insurance from them. Buildings insurance, however, is usually a genuine requirement, because it protects the property the loan is secured against.

That said, taking on a mortgage is one of the more sensible moments to think about life cover, because you’ve just taken on the largest debt of your life, sometimes alongside someone else. Life insurance can help the people you live with afford to stay in the home if you weren’t there.

It comes down to what happens to the size of the payout over the life of the policy.

• Level cover: the amount stays the same throughout. Insure yourself for £250,000 and that’s what pays out, whether you claim in year one or year twenty. Often used where the need doesn’t shrink, such as replacing family income or covering an interest-only mortgage where the debt stays put.
• Decreasing cover: the amount reduces over time, roughly tracking the balance of a repayment mortgage. It’s the cheapest of the three, because the amount the insurer could have to pay falls each year. It’s designed to clear the mortgage rather than leave anything over.
• Increasing cover: the amount rises each year, either by a fixed percentage or in line with inflation. It protects the buying power of the payout over a long term, but the premium rises alongside it.

One detail worth knowing about decreasing cover: the reduction is based on an interest rate assumed when the policy starts, not your actual mortgage rate. If your mortgage rate ends up much higher than that assumption, the cover can shrink faster than your mortgage balance. Which of the three fits depends on what you want the money to do, and an adviser can talk that through with you.

Critical illness cover pays a one-off, tax-free lump sum if you’re diagnosed with one of the serious conditions listed in your policy, commonly cancer, heart attack or stroke. You can spend the payout however you need to: covering the mortgage, adapting your home or taking the pressure off while you focus on getting better. Critical illness cover only pays out for the specific conditions listed on your specific policy. Cover and conditions vary a lot between insurers, so it’s worth checking exactly what’s included. Your adviser can help.

No. This is the most common source of disappointment with these policies. Most insurers pay the full amount for cancers that have spread or reached a defined level of severity, and a smaller partial amount, or sometimes nothing, for early-stage or low-grade diagnoses. A similar logic applies to heart attacks and strokes: the policy sets out how severe the event has to be to count.

It’s worth understanding the conditions your chosen policy covers before you buy it. Your adviser can help you compare these details across insurers to find the policy that’s right for you.

Terminal illness benefit is included with most life insurance policies at no extra cost. If you’re diagnosed with an illness expected to end your life within 12 months, it pays your life cover early rather than after you die. It’s the same money, brought forward.

Critical illness cover is a separate policy you pay extra for, and it pays out on diagnosis of one of the serious conditions listed in the policy, whether or not that condition is likely to be fatal. Plenty of people claim, recover and live for decades afterwards.

So if the worry is what happens if you’re diagnosed with something serious and survive it, that’s critical illness cover. It’s worth checking what your life cover already includes before paying for anything extra.

Income protection replaces part of your income if you can’t work due to illness or injury. There’s normally a waiting period, agreed when you take out the policy, before payments start. Some policies then pay for a set number of years; others keep paying until you recover, retire or the policy ends.

It’s especially worth considering if you’re self-employed or don’t have generous sick pay from an employer, if you’re the main or sole earner in your household, or if your outgoings, such as your mortgage, rent or bills, would be hard to sustain without your usual income.

If you aren’t currently earning an income, either from employment or self-employment, you wouldn’t be eligible for income protection.

This language defines when you count as unable to work. There are three definitions you may come across:

• Own occupation: you can claim if you can’t do your own specific job. This is the most protective of the three.
• Suited occupation: you can claim if you can’t do your own job, or another job suited to your experience, education and training.
• Any occupation: you can only claim if you can’t do any job at all. Much harder to claim on, and cheaper as a result.

Take a surgeon who loses fine motor control in one hand and can no longer operate. Under an “own occupation” definition, that’s a valid claim. Under an “any occupation” definition, the insurer could reasonably argue they’re still capable of some form of work, and decline it. Always check which definition applies to your policy.

No. Being made redundant, resigning or losing your job for non-medical reasons doesn’t trigger a claim.

Generally yes, and these are among the most common reasons people claim. Mental health conditions and musculoskeletal problems, meaning back, neck and joint pain, consistently account for a large share of income protection claims across the industry.

What matters is whether you’re medically unable to work, supported by evidence from your doctor, rather than the label on the diagnosis. So a condition that genuinely stops you working is claimable whether it’s a slipped disc or clinical depression.

Two things to be aware of. If you’ve had the condition before, an insurer may exclude it or charge more for it, which is exactly why declaring your history properly at the application stage matters. And stress on its own isn’t usually a diagnosis; what gets assessed is the underlying condition and its effect on your ability to work.

Combined cover bundles life insurance and critical illness cover into a single policy, and it’s often cheaper than buying them separately. It tends to suit people who want both protections but are also mindful of cost, for example homeowners with a mortgage and a family to think about. The trade-off is that most combined policies only pay out once. If you claim for a critical illness, the life cover usually ends alongside it. Some people prefer separate policies for that reason, so it’s worth weighing up cost against flexibility.