Your mortgage, your bills, your family’s lifestyle — all of it depends on your income. If illness or injury stopped you working for three months, six months, a year — what happens?

Statutory Sick Pay is currently around £116 per week. If that wouldn’t cover your mortgage alone, income protection is worth considering.

What Is Income Protection?

Income protection insurance pays a monthly benefit — typically 50-70% of your gross income — if you can’t work due to illness or injury. It continues paying until you return to work, reach retirement age, or the policy term ends.

Unlike critical illness cover (which pays a one-off lump sum for specific diagnoses), income protection covers any condition that prevents you working in your occupation. Back problems, mental health conditions, injuries, surgery recovery — anything that keeps you off work.

How It Works

You choose a benefit amount, a waiting period (called the deferred period), and a policy term. The deferred period is how long you’d wait before payments start — typically 4, 8, 13, or 26 weeks. Longer deferred periods mean lower premiums.

If you have employer sick pay that covers the first three months, you can set the deferred period to 13 weeks and the policy picks up where your employer leaves off. This keeps the cost down while ensuring you’re covered when it matters.

What It Costs

Income protection is often cheaper than people expect. For a healthy 35-year-old non-smoker, a policy paying £1,500 per month with a 4-week deferred period might cost £30-£50 per month. That’s the price of a few coffees a week to protect your entire income.

Premiums depend on your age, health, occupation, benefit amount, and deferred period. We compare options across multiple insurers to find the right balance of coverage and cost.

Who Needs It Most?

Self-employed workers have no employer sick pay to fall back on. If you stop working, your income stops immediately.

Sole earners — if your household depends on one income, that income needs protecting.

Anyone with a mortgage — your lender doesn’t pause repayments because you’re ill.

Parents — your family’s living standard depends on your ability to earn.

Our Advice

We discuss income protection with every mortgage client because it’s one of those things people assume they don’t need until they do. It’s not compulsory, and we’ll never pressure you into buying something you don’t want. But we’d rather you made an informed decision than discovered the gap when it’s too late.

Talk to us about protecting your income.