It is probably easier to speak to people now about income protection than ever before. Coronavirus has illustrated just how important illness cover can be and what is more – many people are at home and answering their phones.

The pandemic has meant some insures have additional exclusions and underwriting may be a little harder in certain areas, but overall writing income protection cover hasn’t changed much.

Here are five areas to focus on when giving income protection advice:

Occupation class – what a client does for a living sets the tone of where we steer the conversation.  Giving a scaffolder a quote for a full income protection policy to retirement with guaranteed premiums could be expensive and off-putting. The cover we want to be looking for ideally is ‘own’ or ‘suited’ occupation, which means claims will be paid if you can’t do you own job or similar, as opposed to being unable to perform a list of tasks, which is arguably far harder to claim on.

Deferment periods – if the client already has some cover in place through work sick pay or through savings, the deferment period can be chosen accordingly. If you are paid for three months you can defer the IP payment for the same time and reduce the premium by doing so. Depending on the insurer the deferred period can range from a few days or weeks, to a few months or a year.

Length of the term – generally speaking, taking an IP policy to your proposed retirement is often the best advice. Although, with the economy reeling, people are understandably very budget conscious. For this reason, you can match the income protection policy to the term of a mortgage, or until the children are grown up, instead of taking it to retirement.

Maximum claim length – the difference in premiums between a full income protection and one that only pays out for either one or two years is game changing. In a perfect world everybody gets full IP.  Realistically that simply does not happen. Making sure we give our clients both options helps overturn the misconception that income protection is too expensive.

Changing circumstances – income protection should be reviewed regularly as our jobs, income and lives change. Make a point to check in with your clients on an annual basis to makes sure that what you have set up for them is still relevant.

Ben Burgess, senior adviser, LifeSearch