Protection and insurance
We do not just help you secure the right mortgage. We make sure that whatever happens, you and the people who depend on you are not left exposed.
Most people are covered for the least likely event and not covered at all for the most likely one. Life insurance is the cover everyone understands and buys first. Being unable to work for six months is far more likely to happen during a mortgage term, and is the one people skip.
Cover should be built around your circumstances, your family and your budget, rather than sold off the shelf. We would rather arrange less cover that you keep than more that you cancel in six months.
How likely you are to need each one
Across a typical mortgage term, and in roughly the order people usually buy them, which is close to the reverse of the order they will need them.
Life insurance
Pays a lump sum or an income to your loved ones if you die. Usually the cheapest cover to arrange, the one most people already understand, and the least likely to be claimed on during the term itself.
Critical illness cover
Pays out on diagnosis of a serious illness, helping with treatment costs, bills, or time away from work. Materially more likely to be claimed on than life cover during a mortgage term.
Income protection
Replaces part of your income if you cannot work through accident or illness. The cover most often skipped, and the one that protects the thing your mortgage actually depends on, which is your ability to keep earning.
Relative likelihood across a mortgage term, shown to make the ordering visible. Not a statistic about you, and not a reason to buy any particular product.
What people say when protection comes up
I get sick pay through work.
Worth checking exactly how long for. Many employers pay full salary for a period, then statutory sick pay, then nothing. The question is not whether you have cover, it is what month it stops and whether the mortgage payment is still due after that.
I already have life insurance through my job.
Death in service is genuinely useful and it ends the day you leave. It is not portable, it is usually a multiple of salary rather than a figure matched to your mortgage, and it does nothing at all if you are ill rather than dead.
It feels like a lot to spend on something I hope never happens.
That is the correct instinct, and it is why we would rather arrange less cover that stays in force than more that gets cancelled in the spring. Cover you cancelled is worse than cover you never bought, because you paid for it either way.
Do I have to buy insurance to get the mortgage?
No. Buildings insurance is a condition of the mortgage itself, so that one you do need. Life, critical illness and income protection are entirely your choice, and the mortgage does not depend on taking any of them.
The rest of it
- Buildings and contents insurance
- Buildings cover protects the structure against risks such as fire, flood and storm damage, and your lender will require it. Contents cover protects what is inside, which buildings insurance does not. We can now arrange both, and there is a page on it under Protection.
- Reviewed as life changes
- Cover set up around one mortgage rarely still fits three moves later. We revisit it so it does not quietly become the wrong shape while you were not looking.
Let's find out where you stand.
One conversation, no cost, and no obligation to go any further. We will tell you honestly what is possible before you commit to anything.