Life Insurance with Income Protection
Protecting your family financially is not only about planning for what happens if you die. It is also worth thinking about how you would meet your mortgage, bills and other commitments if illness or injury meant you could no longer work.
Life insurance with income protection can help address both risks. Life insurance can provide financial support for the people who depend on you if you die, while income protection can replace part of your earnings if illness or injury prevents you from working. The two forms of cover do different jobs and can be arranged alongside each other as part of a wider protection plan.
Sports Financial Services has more than 20 years of experience helping people arrange financial protection, including applicants with unusual occupations, medical histories or higher-risk hobbies. We can help you understand how different types of cover work together and find options that suit your circumstances.
Complete our short contact form for a free, no-obligation quote or call 0345 565 0935 to speak directly with one of our advisers.
What Is Life Insurance with Income Protection?
Life insurance and income protection cover two different financial risks.
Life insurance is designed to provide a payout if you die while covered by the policy. Depending on the type and amount of cover you choose, this money could help your family deal with a mortgage, debts and other financial commitments.
Income protection is designed for a different situation. If illness or injury means you cannot work, the policy can pay a proportion of your regular earnings after an agreed deferred period. Payments can then continue according to the terms of your policy while you remain unable to work.
Why Consider Life Insurance And Income Protection Together?
Life insurance can provide valuable support for your family after your death, but it does not normally replace your salary simply because illness or injury has stopped you working. Income protection is designed to help cover that gap.
Looking at both types of cover allows you to answer two separate questions. How would the people who depend on you manage financially if you died, and how would your household manage if you survived an illness or injury but could not earn your usual income?
How Income Protection Works Alongside Life Insurance
Life insurance and income protection are designed to cover different financial risks, but they can work well alongside each other.
Life insurance can provide a lump sum to your loved ones if you die during the policy term. This can help with commitments such as mortgage repayments, household bills, debts and ongoing family expenses.
Income protection works differently. It can provide regular payments if illness or injury prevents you from working, helping to replace part of your usual earnings while you recover. The amount paid, how long payments continue and when they begin will depend on the policy you choose.
Combining the two means you can protect against both the loss of your income during your lifetime and the financial impact your death could have on the people who depend on you. Sports Financial Services can help you look at both forms of cover together and decide how they fit with your existing financial commitments.
Choosing The Right Level of Protection
There is no single combination of life insurance and income protection that works for everybody.
For life insurance, the amount of cover you need may be influenced by your mortgage, outstanding debts, number of dependents and how much your household relies on your income.
For income protection, insurers can consider factors such as your earnings, occupation, health, the amount of income you want to protect and how long you are prepared to wait before payments start.
Your employer may already provide sick pay, death in service benefits or another workplace protection scheme. These benefits can form part of the calculation rather than automatically duplicating cover you already have.
Cover For Illness and Injury
The definition of being unable to work deserves particular attention. Some policies assess whether you can carry out your own occupation, while others use broader definitions based on other suitable work or any occupation. The wording can make a significant difference when you make a claim.
This can be especially relevant if your income depends on specialist skills or physical ability.
Your Occupation And Lifestyle Can Affect Cover
Your occupation can affect both life insurance and income protection. Someone working in an office may be assessed differently from someone who regularly works at height, offshore, underground or with dangerous machinery.
Sports Financial Services has extensive experience with occupational life insurance and people working in physically demanding or higher-risk roles. We can discuss your actual duties with you rather than making assumptions based only on your job title.
Sports and leisure activities can also affect underwriting. This is particularly relevant with income protection because an injury that stops you performing your occupation could also prevent you from earning for a prolonged period. If you regularly take part in higher-risk activities, our extreme sports insurance guidance explains how these risks can affect cover.
If work, sport or a medical condition makes your application less straightforward, we can look at these factors together when deciding which insurers to approach.
Life Insurance, Income Protection and Critical Illness Cover
Income protection should not be confused with critical illness cover.
Critical illness cover generally provides a payout if you are diagnosed with one of the serious illnesses covered by your policy. Income protection instead provides regular payments when illness or injury means you meet the policy’s definition of being unable to work.
If keeping your home is one of your main concerns, you can also explore our mortgage protection options.
Who Might Benefit from Both Types of Cover
Life insurance with income protection can be relevant if other people rely on your earnings or if losing your income would make it difficult to maintain your regular financial commitments.
This could include parents supporting children, couples with a mortgage, sole earners, company directors, contractors and self-employed people without extensive sick pay arrangements.
Self-employed people may also find our life insurance for self-employed guidance useful when reviewing their wider protection needs.
Why Choose Sports Financial Services?
Sports Financial Services has more than 20 years of experience helping people arrange life insurance, income protection and other forms of financial protection.
We work with a range of insurers, which allows us to look at different underwriting approaches rather than relying on a single provider. This can be particularly useful if your occupation, health or sporting activities make your application less straightforward. Sports Financial Services currently offers products from a range of insurers for life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection insurance.
Our advisers will discuss what you want to protect, the cover you already have and the financial commitments that would continue if your circumstances changed. We can then explain the options available and help you decide which combination fits your needs.
Get A Free, No-Obligation Quote
Arranging life insurance with income protection can provide protection against both situations, with each policy structured around the financial risk it is designed to cover.
Complete our contact form for a free, no-obligation quote, or call 0345 565 0935 to speak directly with one of our advisers about the options available to you.