Income Protection
Accidents, illnesses or injuries come in life unplanned. At Weystone Financial we help protect you, before, these things occur because breaking the bank once your income has stopped is not ideal.
Blog 1 featuring Cirencester Friendly
This week’s blog from Weystone Financial features Cirencester Friendly. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cirencester Friendly, they have provided income protection since 1890 [1] and have recently been shortlisted in the COVER Excellence Awards for four awards including, Best Promotion of Protection! Income protection protects individuals in the event of accident, illness or injury. This can include cancer, broken bones, or even undiagnosed ailments. Income protection can be tricky depending on your company sick pay and your own individual circumstances, so it is always best to get advice from a broker or financial advisor to make sure it’s right for you first, income protection doesn’t necessarily suit everyone’s needs.
Many people are put off by the idea of insurance, due to the horror stories of policies and claims not paying out. In an industry where only 84.7% of all claims were paid in relation to income protection [2], Cirencester Friendly paid 94.7% of claims in 2017, that’s 10% higher than the average [3]! Ash-Lee James, Sales Director of Weystone Financial says “As an advisor you always feel more comfortable putting your faith in a provider that will treat your clients like people and not just a statistic, whenever my clients pick Cirencester I know they will have a good experience”.
Cirencester Friendly offer a choice of many “deferment periods”. A deferment period is the amount of time off work you need to be signed off for before the provider will start to pay your claim. They have a Day 1 cover, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 13 weeks, 26 and 52 weeks. The policy can continue to pay claims until the end of your policy. Cirencester Friendly have also added Fracture & Hospitalisation Benefit to their contract. Despite Cirencester Friendly being a smaller company compared to some competitors in the industry, their Customer Care support team, products and pricing have made them favourable in the market for advisors and clients.
We were fortunate enough to speak with Victoria Clark who was able to spare a few minutes for us. Victoria is currently a Marketing Assistant at Cirencester Friendly and a former member of the Customer Care Team. In 2017 she was nominated for the Outstanding Customer Care in the COVER Customer Care Awards and in 2018 won the Young Person of the Year! She emphasised the importance of income protection for people as many are unaware such policies exist, “It’s important that we as a Society and the industry highlight the importance of income protection. Income protection is an area that consumers don’t really know about or understand, yet, is one of the most important insurances you can have.” Victoria then went on to highlight the most basic and fundamental reason why income protection is so valued, “If people were to be signed off work and therefore have no income, how long would their savings last? Why wouldn’t you protect your earnings?”
Over the next few weeks we will be speaking with Holloway Friendly and CanadaLife. If you have any questions you can contact us on the details below. Feel free to leave comments to help stir the income protection conversation.
Best regards,
Weystone Financial LTD
Email address: info@weystone.co.uk
Office Number: 01483331685
- https://www.cirencester-friendly.co.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/128th_Annual_Report_and_Accounts.pdf
- https://www.abi.org.uk/news/news-articles/2017/05/protection-insurers-pay-out-13m-per-day-in-claims/
- https://www.cirencester-friendly.co.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/Claim_Statistics_Card.pdf
There’s definately a great deal to learn about this topic. I like all the points you made.