Income Protection Insurance FAQs

Income Protection Cover replaces your income with a monthly payout after you have been unable to work due to illness, injury or disability for a specific period of time.

Income protection is a useful product for anyone who wants to cover their salary so they don't fall behind with monthly living expenses – such as mortgage repayments - should they be unable to work, due to illness, injury or disability.

Typical times when people consider income protection insurance include:

• when changing jobs
• when getting married
• when starting a family

If you do qualify for state benefits the reality is that it may not be enough to maintain your current lifestyle and any financial commitments you have in place. According to DirectGov.co.uk, Employment and Support Allowance may only pay between 101.15 and £108.15 per week. Could you and your family survive on this?

Please note: the above points are based on our understanding of the current State benefit system. For specific information about your entitlement to claim State benefit, you should contact your local Department for Work & Pensions.

When choosing income protection, first think about the two broad options relating to cover:

• Short Term - our Short Term Income Protection Cover provides you with payouts should you become ill and unable to work for a maximum payout period of 24 months per condition
• Long term – our Primary and Comprehensive income protection insurance can provide cover if you become so ill that it's unlikely you'll be able to work again. The payouts will continue until you go back to work or when your cover comes to an end

Yes. You can add extra options to help you get the most from your cover. Once you’ve decided whether you’d like our Primary or our Comprehensive Income Protection Cover, you can choose to add some extra options to your plan:

Extra protection

We’ve included the option to protect a higher amount of your income for even greater security.This means you can protect 60% of your gross income for the first £30k per annum and 50% thereafter with our Comprehensive Cover.

Protecting the value of your cover

Because we realise that rises in the cost of living may reduce the value of your benefit you can choose for your cover to automatically increase each year in line with the retail prices index (up to 10% per annum).

Permanent disability uplift

With our Comprehensive Cover if you become permanently disabled, we’ll increase your benefit by 10% to reflect the greater impact on your lifestyle.

Waiver of premiums

If we’re paying you a claim, we’ll automatically waive your Income Protection Cover premiums. And with ourComprehensive Cover we’ll also waive any VitalityLife Plan and VitalityHealth premiums, too.

Guaranteed insurability Option

We appreciate that your personal circumstances may change over time and so we offer you the flexibility toincrease your cover to suit your needs. For example, you can increase your cover after a job promotion, childbirth, remortgage or new mortgage.

Self-employed benefit

With our Comprehensive Cover you can protect 60% of your gross salary for the first £30,000 per annum and 50% thereafter. And because it’s tax-free this should replace most of your net salary.

For example, if you earn £50,000 per year, you would receive 60% of the first £30,000 (£18,000) and 50% on the remaining £20,000 (£10,000) giving you an annual benefit of £28,000.

With our Short Term and Primary Cover, the maximum cover available is 50% of your gross salary.

Your payment will be due at the end of your deferred period.  The deferred period starts on the date you become incapacitated. It ends when you have been continuously incapacitated for one of:

• 7 days (this is only an option if you are self-employed)
• 1 month
• 3 months
• 6 months
• 12 months

You decide the deferred period that applies when you take out your policy.

Clients can also choose to add Vitality Optimiser or Vitality Plus to either plan if their monthly protection premium is over £20 for a plan covering one person or £30 for a plan covering two people.

Your premium will depend on a number of factors, such as:

• Your age
• Your medical history and your family’s medical history
• Your occupation
• If you are a smoker (or use other tobacco products)
• Your alcohol consumption
• Whether you choose Comprehensive, Primary or Short Term Income Protection

If you are on a budget you may want to consider Short Term Income Protection as a cheaper alternative.

If you’re unable to work through illness or injury, you can feel confident that you are protected because our cover comes with greater certainty that we’ll pay out what we agree to. If you verify your salary at the application stage, we’ll guarantee you receive the agreed amount when you claim – even if you income has reduced!

Yes! We realise that running your own business can be even more daunting when it comes to financial risk. So, if you are self-employed we can start paying your benefit from seven days to give you greater financial security. For many illnesses, we’ll also backdate the payment so you get paid for those seven days.

No. The policy is designed to pay out only if you're unable to work due to accident or sickness during the term of your policy. Once your policy has reached its end date, your cover stops, and you won’t get anything back.