Key Insurance to protect you and your family:
Financial Planning is the cornerstone to all financial success and an important, and often overlooked, component of financial planning is an evaluation of the kinds of insurance you need to protect yourself, your assets, and your loved ones. Insurance types can include life cover, critical illness cover, income protection to name a few. Depending on your stage in life, your insurance needs will change and evolve.
A brief description of some these insurances are as follows:
Life Insurance
Life insurance, also known as life cover or life assurance. It helps you to financially protect your family’s future.
Life Insurance could pay out a cash sum if you die while covered by the policy. You choose the amount of life cover you need and how long you need it for and you can pay your premiums monthly or annually. Life insurance offers reassurance that your family will still be looked after financially should the worst happen.
Income Protection
Formerly known as permanent health insurance (PHI), long-term income protection (IP) is an insurance policy that pays out if you’re unable to work because of injury or illness.
Policies typically start to pay out after a deferred period – usually between four and 52 weeks.
Depending on your terms and conditions, payouts will continue until you return to work or when the policy expires – usually when you reach retirement, or at the end of a fixed period/event, like a mortgage term for example.
Critical Illness Cover
People often need to be reassured they can continue to cover monthly outgoings including mortgage payments if they suffer from a critical illness.
Critical illness cover, also known as critical illness insurance, is a long-term insurance policy which covers serious illnesses listed within a policy. If you get one of these illnesses, a critical illness policy will pay out a tax-free, one-off payment. This can help pay for your mortgage, rent, debts, or alterations to your home, such as wheelchair access, should you need it.
Below are a few examples of critical illnesses that might be covered, these include:
- Stroke
- Heart attack
- Certain types and stages of cancer
- Conditions such as multiple sclerosis
How can we help you?
There are many subtle differences in cover from company to company and in definitions. It is important to consider what is most important to suit your personal situation. You need to consider things like:
- Joint or Single policies
- Guaranteed or reviewable policies
- The policy term
- Level/Decreasing/ Whole of Life
- Life Cover AND Critical Illness/Life Cover OR Critical Illness
- ABI Definitions
- Strength of Provider
- Additional free cover offered by providers for example: Free Children’s cover, free legal and medical helplines etc.
This is where we at A1 Mortgages can guide you through the small print and help you build a bespoke plan that matches your needs and requirements.