Self Employed Sick Pay: Income Protection

Making sure the self employed are protected with sick pay

Sound too good to be true? Let me explain how we can protect you whilst your off work and self employed with self employed sick pay. Picture this, you’re a self-employed tradesman working a day on site. All is going well and you are just wrapping up a job. You go to put away your tools and notice you’ve missed painting a spot. In your slight rush you put the ladder up to get to this area and you end up not putting it up completely safely. The ladder slips and you fall damaging your back meaning you’ll be out of work for 3-6 months. Now, you’re self employed, you don’t have any sick pay available. What are you going to do? This is where we can give you self employed sick pay with income protection insurance. Self employed sick pay can start paying out from day one. Meaning you have sick pay set up to cover your self employment. You can also have it set up to pay out at later periods. This can vary from a week to six months depending on your situation. With the longer the period taken to payout the cheaper the cost is. As this is less risk for the insurer. We call this period the deferred period. Normally the deferred period is based off how much of a buffer of savings you have. If you have the money saved up for a couple of months it makes sense to make your deferred period longer so you can benefit from cheaper premiums and support yourself whilst still having the buffer of insurance if you need it.

I’m employed, surely I get statutory sick pay?

Self employed people don’t have sick pay to fall back on to. As an employed person, generally speaking, you do have this in place. BUT, this all depends on the employer, how much they give you and for how long. If you don’t look into your contract, how can you be certain you are covered? A lot of people don’t think of this until it is too late. Take a look at your employment contract and see how much you are covered for and for how long. Despite being obliged to pay you sick pay, don’t take that for granted. Make sure you read the contract and also take note of how long you have to be off for before they start paying you. As that time you will be recovering could be money lost needlessly if you had the right insurance. Self employed sick pay in the form of income protection doesn’t work only for the self employed. Covering your pay is essential, do you know how much is sorted for you? Is it only half pay? For how long does this last? Is it only a certain amount of time per year? When you have all these answered, look at income protection to cover any short falls. The last thing you want is to be struggling financially when you should be focusing on your health.

Self employed sick pay vs other insurance

You may think that other insurance will make income protection pointless. You are wrong. To put it bluntly, nothing can cover you like income protection insurance can. Critical illness insurance cover may pay you out a lump sum on diagnosis, but what if your illness isn’t critical? What if you just slipped a disk in your back and can’t work for nine months? It won’t pay you out in that instance. What about life insurance, you heard that pays out? Well bad news for you, it only pays out on death. And that is no used to you if you are shackled up with a broken leg and need to get to tiling roofs in order to put food on the table. Only self employed sick pay can cover you in this scenario. Even with family income benefit insurance this will only cover on death. Income protection insurance is for the living, it covers you from the worry of having to provide when you are not capable. It allows you the right time and peace of mind to get better and return to work fit and healthy. This goes for the self employed and employed. With our assessments being free of charge there is nothing you can lose in getting us to look at your situation and need for insurance. Often people don’t think of income protection insurance advice before it is too late, don’t be that person.

How much will self employed sick pay cost?

This can vary on many different factors. Age, type of work, whether you have or do smoke, how much income you’d like to have insured, when you want the policy to start paying out, the deferred period, the range of illnesses covered and your current health. It’s key to look at this type of insurance if you are self employed given you have no other sick pay available to yourself. What we will do is give you advice from the whole of market on self employed sick pay. We have all insurers on our panel to cater to your needs. This means we will be looking at often the best prices with the most comprehensive self employed sick pay cover in place. We assess your shortfalls by going through a fact find process. This means we gather information on your financial and personal situation. Look over this and find the gaps to cover with the correct insurance.

Other insurance cover to consider

There are a lot of circumstances you can cover yourself for with insurance aside from self employed sick pay. Whether that be providing the family with an income using insurance. Or you could look at protecting your mortgage balance with life insurance. Buildings and contents is also something we advise on with 5 star rated products. And we also look at life insurance that can be placed in a business, we call this key man cover. There are many avenues you can go down but the best thing about our insurance advice… Is…. Our advice on insurance is FREE. We take a look at your situation and will process an insurance application FREE of charge. Just in case you didn’t get the message that means you pay ZERO for this advice. Pretty good, right? Get in touch with us to discuss your situation and need for insurance to protect yourself or your family. Please do be advised as well that we also cover the full remit of financial advice including pensions,