My employer provides income protection but should I take it out separately?

[Gushering]

My employer currently provides income protection for its employees but not sure I will be working there forever and I'm minded to arrange my own income protection cover so I have certainty and am not reliant on my employer to cover me throughout the remainder of my career.

Leaving aside the added expense, is there any sound reason preventing me from doing this? Will it have any impact on the eligibility for tax relief? Currently I do not have any tax credits allocated towards the employer's policy.

 

[Dr Strangelove]

I'm minded to arrange my own income protection cover so I have certainty and am not reliant on my employer to cover me throughout the remainder of my career.

Makes very little sense to me. If you move employer just take out private cover then. Why do it in advance?

Leaving aside the added expense,

You'd need to read the fine print, but I doubt that you can insure twice against the same event, almost certainly not to a level over and above your current salary.

 

[cloughy]

Income protection paid by an employer would only cover you whilst working for that employer. When you leave they will stop paying the premium and you can't subsequently claim under it, it will be a lapsed policy.

 

[cloughy]

When leaving you could look to get the policy into your own name, but these policies normally cover say 50% of salary but that would be based on old salary, with maybe an inflation linked amount, but that would also increase the annual premium. Its also job specific, so someone working in in office shoukd have lower premium than say construction worker.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Leaving aside the added expense, is there any sound reason preventing me from doing this?

Surely it's a purely financial decision?

It's not like buying a family home, where you might factor in other considerations.

So "leaving aside the added expense" makes no sense.

I am not sure that healthy people get good value from income protection. So instead of taking out the second insurance, pay the premium saved off your mortgage.

Brendan