Permanent Health Insurance

For an immediate permanent health insurance quote during working hours please call 0845 365 0030 quoting ref WS6
To get a permanent health insurance quote online please click here
For short term accident, sickness and unemployment insurance click here

Permanent health insurance is sometimes known as PHI, income replacement insurance, or long term disability insurance. PHI is an insurance policy that is designed to pay a replacement income should you be unable to work through ill health. Financial advisers normally recommend that you take out a policy that will pay the monthly benefit until your chosen retirement age.

Last year over 600,000 men aged over 40 had been incapacitated due to ill health for more than six months. Statutory sick pay is not means tested, however it is only payable for up to 28 weeks after which you must claim incapacity benefit. Not everyone qualifies for these benefits and even if you do, could you survive on £72.55 per week?

There are a number of main differences between permanent health insurance, and short term income protection policies and these are:-

• PHI once accepted can only be cancelled by the client.
• PHI benefits can be paid until age 65 from the age of 18 giving a maximum payment term of 47 years.
• PHI is generally more expensive than short term income protection.

To help reduce the cost of permanent health insurance it may be worthwhile to look at a short term income protection policy to cover the first 12 months, and a permanent health insurance policy with a deferred period of 12 months to cover the period after that.

These policies are called permanent because only the client can cancel the policy unlike short term income protection policies where the insurer can normally cancel with only 30 days notice.

We recommend that if you are considering a PHI policy that you speak to one of our advisors as terms and conditions vary widely, particularly in relation to your occupation definition.

Most long term disability insurance policies do not pay out for at least 30 days, and they will only then pay out once in receipt of a doctor's note stating that you are unfit for work.

There are two definitions of occupation, and these are own occupation, and any occupation. Own occupation is the most desirable as this means you only need prove you are unfit to follow your own occupation and you do not need to prove you are unfit to follow any occupation

If you are interested in exploring this further please call one of our advisers on the number above.