Life Assurance
A term life insurance plan is the most basic form of insurance and is generally designed to pay a tax-free lump sum should you die during the ‘term’. The funds are typically used to repay the full mortgage amount and ensures your family keep a roof over their head.

There are some policies that may provide a monthly income to ensure your family’s lifestyle isn’t affected in the event of you losing income. This is known as Family Income Benefit.

Critical Illness Cover
A Critical Illness Plan is designed to pay out a tax-free lump sum on the diagnosis of certain specified illnesses. Becoming seriously ill can have a huge impact on you and your family’s ability to live a normal life at this very stressful time. The tax-free lump sum is generally used to pay for medical bills, care costs or daily financial commitments.

This cover is sometimes ‘bolted on’ to a life assurance policy as an additional benefit but can also be taken out as a stand-alone plan.

Income Protection
An Income Protection Plan is designed to pay out a regular income in the event of you being unable to work due to an accident or illness. These policies continue to pay out if you are unable to return to work up until the end date of the policy (which is typically at retirement age).

This type of cover is available to both the employed and self-employed and is designed to help individuals maintain their lifestyle. Our advisers can help to identify your needs and help find a plan to meet your requirements.

Accident, Sickness and Unemployment
This type of insurance is the only policy to protect you against losing your income through redundancy.

Safe in the knowledge that that you will be able to keep up with your bills and other financial commitments allows you to concentrate on finding another source of income.

These policies are time-limited insurance products that provide short term assistance. They generally start paying out 1 month after redundancy and pay out for a set period, normally 12-24 months depending on the policy.

Whole of Life
As the name implies, this policy is designed to pay out on death, whenever that may be. This cover is typically a more expensive option than term assurance simply due to the fact the policy will definitely pay out at some point.

If you are looking to leave a lump sum in the event of your death to pay off debts, assist with school fees or for inheritance tax purposes, it may be worth considering this type of cover.

Business Protection
This is a specialist area and is generally broken down into 2 different policies;

• Key Man Assurance. There are many situations where the loss of a colleague can have severe implications on the financial health of an organisation i.e. loss of revenue or loss of skills. Adequate business protection will ensure peace of mind that the business is financially secure should a ‘key man’ be unable to work.

• Relevant Life Cover. This type of policy will provide a lump sum on the death of an employee, removing the need for companies to set up a costly registered group life scheme.

1. Small businesses that don’t have enough eligible employees to warrant a group life scheme, and
2. High earning employees that have substantial pension funds and don’t want their death in service benefit to form part of their lifetime allowance.