Moneysworth wins Best Small Protection Advice Firm 2023!
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When you think of protection insurance, your first thought might be life insurance. Life cover is certainly important to make sure your family don’t lose out financially, should the worst happen.
Ideally, you should have life cover for the following eventualities:
While life insurance is undoubtedly important, don’t underestimate the importance of critical illness and income protection insurance.
Critical illness insurance provides a lump sum should you contract a serious illness, such as heart disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis and more advanced cancers. This lump sum can then be used to pay off your mortgage and/or to pay medical and care costs and/or to convert your home to make domestic arrangements easier while you are ill.
Another valuable feature of critical illness is that you can also cover your children, so that you receive a sum of money if one of them was diagnosed with a serious illness.
Income protection insurance pays a replacement income should you be unable to work for an extended period due to accident or sickness. Income protection can either be long-term, i.e. it will pay out until the policy ends or you go back to work; or short-term, where the length of time it pays out for is limited to perhaps one, two or five years.
These types of insurance can be of benefit to almost anybody. Anyone can contract a critical illness, and anyone can become ill and need to take time off work, indeed you probably know someone who has been forced to do this at some stage.
If you are single with no dependants, then you might also have little need for life cover, especially if you also don’t have a mortgage. Critical illness and income protection might therefore be a higher priority.
Unfortunately, serious illnesses are far from uncommon. For example, Cancer Research UK says that 1,000 people are diagnosed with cancer in the UK every day. The British Heart Foundation claims that 260 people will need to be admitted to hospital today, as a result of a heart attack. Leading insurer LV asserts that a 30-year old man has a 21% chance of contracting a serious illness before age 70.
Life insurance policies only pay out when you die, or if a medical professional believes you have a terminal illness that will lead to death within 12 months. Cancer Research UK also says that 50% of people diagnosed with cancer live for at least 10 years. This means that people are increasingly likely to survive critical illnesses and to require medical and other assistance for several years while living with the condition.
This is a different type of insurance that normally only covers the direct costs of your treatment. You need critical illness insurance if you want to pay for longer-term care, or to modify your home, or to pay off your mortgage.
This may be true, but remember that they might need to stop work, or at least reduce their working hours, to do this, thus reducing the household income significantly. You might also need specialist nursing care that only a healthcare professional can provide, or you might want to pay for modifications to your home to help with your domestic living arrangements while you are ill. It’s also great to have the peace of mind that your mortgage will be paid off if you become critically ill.
The insurers Moneysworth typically uses all had payout rates of between 87% and 98% for critical illness insurance claims, according to their most recent annual statistics.
Large numbers of people need to take time off work due to illness, indeed you may well know someone who has had to do this recently. Government data shows that, at the time of writing, 2.5 million people of working age in the UK are on long-term sick leave.
Many employers do give you sick pay for a certain time, but how many will carry on paying you for several years? You might need to check your employee handbook very carefully. Even if you know of a colleague who was paid in full for a six-month absence, it is possible that the company did so on a discretionary basis, and that it was not contractually obliged to do so.
One of the best things about income protection policies is that they come with a range of ‘deferred periods’. The deferred period is the length of time for which you need to be off work before the policy starts to pay out. If your employer doesn’t give you any sick pay, you can select a deferred period of four weeks (usually the shortest deferred period available with this type of insurance). If your employer will give you full pay for three months, you can choose a 13-week deferred period.
At the time of writing, state support for those on sick leave is just £109.40 per week, which is clearly a very limited amount. The application process for this benefit can also be very complex.
Income protection premiums can be fairly significant, but this is because the insurer might need to keep paying a significant proportion of your salary for the rest of your working life, in the worst case scenario. Consider that, in return for your premium, you get considerable peace of mind. If affordability is an issue, we can look to arrange a cheaper short-term policy for you, where the payout period might be capped at one, two or five years.
Many insurers will still offer this cover to the self-employed. Also, if you’re thinking that you could still generate an income from the business if you were ill, consider carefully how realistic this is. If it’s a small business and you are a senior manager, it could well be the case that the business is severely affected by your absence.
The insurers Moneysworth typically uses all had payout rates of between 81% and 93% for income protection insurance claims, according to their most recent annual statistics.
Moneysworth are experts in arranging critical illness and income protection insurance. We are a whole-of-market specialist protection broker and we can search the entire marketplace to find the most suitable product and provider for your individual circumstances. Contact us today to find out more.
Moneysworth is delighted to announce that it has been shortlisted in as many as three different categories in the Excellence Awards of insurance industry publication COVER.
These categories are:
This is deserved recognition of the efforts of our staff and a fantastic acknowledgement of the quality of service we provide to our clients.
Moneysworth now looks forward to the awards ceremony on 2nd November, when hopefully there will be further good news!
Before then, Moneysworth is shortlisted in the Best Small Protection Advice Firm and Best Individual Advice Firm categories at the Health & Protection Awards. That ceremony takes place next week, on 11th October.
The expert judging panels have recognised that we offer the highest levels of advice and customer service, so if you are a consumer seeking life insurance, critical illness insurance or income protection insurance, get in touch with us today.
If you work for a financial services firm, then you can rest assured that your clients will be in safe hands if you introduce them to Moneysworth, so again, please contact us to find out more about what we can offer.
On taking out a mortgage, or increasing their mortgage amount, many people are prompted to take out life insurance to cover the mortgage balance.
Mortgage life cover is certainly important, but if you are taking out a policy for this purpose, you should also think about what additional cover you might need.
If you don’t have a mortgage, then you should still think about this area. Life events that should prompt you to review your life insurance requirements include:
Depending on your individual circumstances, it can be a good idea to have life insurance for:
Moneysworth’s highly experienced advisers are available to discuss your life cover needs and to carry out a full assessment of how much insurance you might need. Contact us today to find out what we can offer.
Trade association the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) has announced that it has renewed its Agreement on Access to Protection Insurance for a further three years. Since the agreement came into force in 2020, BIBA estimates that it has helped 30,000 people to access suitable protection cover.
39 insurers, brokers and professional bodies have signed the agreement and Moneysworth is delighted to be one of those signatories.
The Agreement makes reference to an important provision of the Equality Act 2010. While the Act allows providers to refuse to cover people with health conditions, in certain circumstances, the Agreement acknowledges the important point that insurers must make a “reasonable decision, based on reliable evidence, to refuse cover or charge a high premium to an applicant with a pre-existing medical condition.” This means that there should not be a blanket refusal to cover someone simply because they mention a particular health condition – the insurer should instead conduct a thorough assessment of the extent to which that health condition represents an increased risk.
Moneysworth specialises in assisting clients with many different mental and physical health conditions to find suitable protection insurance.
Moneysworth is also looking forward to two separate awards ceremonies later this year, where we have been shortlisted for five prizes. The COVER Magazine categories we are shortlisted for are: Outstanding Client Engagement, Outstanding Specialist Intermediary and Small Intermediary of the Year. The Health Protection awards we are shortlisted for are: Best Small Protection Advice Firm and Best Individual Protection Advice Firm.
You may be aware of the Consumer Duty, which was introduced by our regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), on 31st July 2023.
The Consumer Duty places new obligations in financial services firms to take positive actions to ensure they deliver good outcomes for their clients.
Moneysworth believes that, in order to ensure our clients get the very best outcomes, we need to explore all possible options when it comes to finding a suitable provider and product.
If this applies to you, then give Moneysworth a try. We cannot guarantee that we can get you covered, but we promise to do our very best.
Other brokers who say they can’t help you might not be protection specialists, or it might be that they are unwilling to take on the extra work involved with a more complex case. Neither of these apply to Moneysworth. Life insurance and other areas of protection are the only areas we advise on.
We have extensive experience of securing insurance for clients with many different medical conditions. We know which providers are likely to consider your application sympathetically. We are not afraid to challenge insurers if we think they have been unreasonable in declining an application, or if they are proposing to charge an unduly large premium, and we have been successful in this respect on a number of occasions.
Contact us today if you’ve been finding it difficult to get life insurance, critical illness insurance or income protection insurance.
The central idea of the Financial Conduct Authority’s new Consumer Duty initiative is that clients should receive “good outcomes”.
When it comes to life and health insurance protection, this is likely to mean that firms will need to take a ‘holistic’ approach, meaning that they will need to consider all of a client’s potential protection needs, rather than perhaps thinking just about life protection in one or two areas.
Similar sentiments have been expressed in several recent trade press articles.
This means considering not only life insurance for the mortgage balance, but also critical illness insurance, as well as some form of income protection or payment protection insurance, as there is a much greater risk of becoming ill during your mortgage term as there is of passing away.
It also means considering all potential protection needs, rather than perhaps just concentrating on life cover.
If an authorised firm decides it doesn’t want to get involved in protection advice, then it has the opportunity to establish an arrangement with a partner firm, whereby insurance leads are passed on to this other firm.
In the new Consumer Duty world, Moneysworth is able to give advice in all areas of protection, including:
One of our particular specialisms is arranging suitable cover for individuals who may otherwise have found it difficult to obtain protection elsewhere.
We have helped large numbers of clients whose circumstances may be a little unusual. For example, they might:
If you wish to find out more about arranging suitable insurance for yourself, then contact Moneysworth today to find out how we can help you.
Moneysworth is well placed to become your protection specialist partner firm in the brave new world of the Consumer Duty.
Since our foundation in 2003, we have become an established and respected name in the protection sector, with numerous satisfied clients and several industry awards to our name.
We invite you to place your trust in Moneysworth’s highly experienced team, who have many years’ experience of the protection market and of helping clients just like yours to achieve fantastic outcomes.
If you want to discuss the opportunities offered by introducing business to Moneysworth, get in touch with us today.
