Income protection Insurance? second hand car salesmen

[nbc]

Hi,
I'm about to take out income protection with friends first. I'm 39 and getting E60,000 per annum benefit for E200 a month. In one of the sunday newspapers at the weekend in the best buys section it said to beware of this sort of insurance and treat these companies like you would a second hand car saleman! Can someone explain why? I feel its good security till the age of 65 and hope I wont have to claim. Apparantly they pay out on 90% of claims.
nbc

 

[StevieC]

There is two different types of income protection.

The first which you most likely got a quote for is for illness. This is an excellent product and offers comprehensive cover to retirement age in the event that you cannot work due to illness. As well as Friends First, Irish Life also offer this product so it may be worth checking with them to see if you can get the same cover cheaper. Also a number of online discount brokers that offer cheaper life assurance do deals on income protection cover too. It may be worth a google to see if you can get the first years premium reduced with one of them.

The second type is redundancy cover. I think this is probably the product you read the warning about as a lot of people have question marks over it due to the amount of ways the insurer can get out of paying a claim.



www.CheaperLifeAssurance.ie

 

[Jimbobp]

I read that article as well and thought it very lazy journalism. I would agree with Stevie that income protection is an excellent product and even redundancy cover can be well worth while if taken out in the correct context. I processed a claim for a client about 2 years ago, The company handled the claim brilliantly and it looks like the client will be out of work for a long time. Without the benefit that this policy is paying her, she would probably have to have sold her house by now (By the way, I am a broker so I need to declare an interest here)