It’s highly likely that when you were a smallie, your ma or your da told you that to be successful in life, you need to do well in school, get a good job, and work hard. It’s not bad life advice, though it’s probably a little different now given that every eight-year-old wants to be a YouTuber.
Instead of working hard, all you gotta do to be a millionaire is make videos of you playing video games while screaming at your computer. Keep it up, son, and someday you might be PewDiePie.
What your parents probably didn’t tell you is that life isn’t linear and that sometimes shit happens. You can work hard and do everything right and then you can get sick or be in an accident, and it can wipe you clean out of the workforce.
The wheels will come clean off, and you’ll be stuck struggling to make ends meet on the government’s paltry State Benefits (it’s currently €203 a week) or blowing an absolute hole in your savings.
Unless you have Income Protection.
Presumably, you’re considering it, and that’s what’s brought you here to my corner of the internet.
Welcome!
A quick recap if you’ve stumbled here by mistake or if this is your starting off point:
Income Protection is a type of insurance that pays you a replacement salary if you can’t do your job, long-term, because of any injury or illness.
The average Income Protection claim, for context, is about seven years.
Income Protection cover doesn’t kick in immediately; instead, you choose a waiting period (called a deferral period) of either 4, 8, 13, 26, or 52 weeks. Once you’ve been out of work for that period of time, the insurer will start paying you a replacement income.
As far as I’m concerned, everyone should have Income Protection. For one, you don’t actually have to die to reap the benefit, which is a novelty for life insurance. And it literally covers everything from long-term back pain to chronic depression.
Now we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at how you should compare Income Protection policies.
At lion.ie, we’re an online Life Insurance broker, and we deal with all the major insurers. For income protection insurance, your options are:
For the TL;DR, I recommend Aviva’s Income Protection.
For the not-TL; D.R., keep reading.
Meet Sally 👋
Sally is a 40-year-old accountant. For the sake of argument, she makes the average salary in Ireland of €45,611. This is a precise number and as it’s from the CSO so we can assume it’s legit.
Sally wants Income Protection with a 13-week deferral period.
Keep ‘er lit, Sally.
If Sally were to use my magic quote machine, her quote would look like this:
On the left, you’ll see a list of the insurers. The middle column is the price before tax relief. And the right column shows the actual cost after tax relief.
The amount of tax relief you can claim depends on how much income tax you pay. If you pay 20% income tax, you get 20% tax relief. If you’re a higher earner and pay 40% income tax, well then you can get 40% tax relief which is WHOPPER! And one of the main reasons that I prefer income protection to serious illness cover
If you’re wondering why you’re seeing double, it’s because some insurers offer two types of Income Protection: Reviewable and Guaranteed.
Reviewable means the price won’t necessarily stay the same over time, i.e. the insurer can review your policy/situation and change the price every 5 years.
Guaranteed or Fixed is a sticky price.
For what it’s worth, I’d usually recommend Guaranteed. It may cost a few quid more at face value, but at least you know it’ll stay at that price. This is especially true since COVID19 joined the party – the insurers will be looking for any excuse to raise premiums.
P.S. if you want more info on how your premium/price you pay is calculated, hop over here to my article on Income Protection calculators for some more soothing bedtime reading.
You might be tempted to go for the cheapest quote. You wouldn’t be the first person to take the easy option; you won’t be the last. However, it’s also worth looking at the benefits each insurer offers.
So, because Income Protection is similar for each insurer, they also throw in handy little extras to sway you to them. You could call it marketing or bribery.
The benefits of getting Income Protection cover from each specific provider listed above, in brief, are:
Value Added Benefits
Key Features
Claims
Exclusives on offer with Aviva!
So it’s a resounding thumbs up from us for Aviva Income Protection.
So what you should be looking at:
☑️ What does it cost? Remember to look at the number that shows tax relief.
☑️ Is it Reviewable or Guaranteed? Generally, go with Guaranteed.
☑️ Are the benefits the best you can get for your situation?
☑️ Risky occupation? Class 3 (jobs like care assistant, nurse, electrician) or 4 workers (carpenter, plumber, etc.) should choose Aviva all day, every day. You’ll want their Wage Protector option, which is the only insurance of its type explicitly catered to help Class 3 and 4 workers to get a better deal. It’s not as comprehensive as full income protection, but it’s affordable.
And that’s it!
If you want a shortcut and it’s too late to become a YouTuber, I suggest asking a seasoned Income Protection broker to help you out. Of course, I mean me.
If you’ve made it this far in this article, you can see I’m a big fan of a no-bullshit approach to all of this. If that’s your vibe too, you can get a quote by filling in the quick form here or by giving me a call on
Chat soon!
Nick
As Ireland's leading life insurance broker, we specialise in comparing the rates and policies from the top five Irish life insurance providers and offering the very best value quotes to suit the individual needs of our clients. Our expertise lies in finding a suitable insurance plan for those with specific needs, be it a particular illness, occupation or claim history, we've got you covered in every sense!
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