Which? Magazine has recently confirmed that one protection policy every working adult in the UK should consider is 'Income Protection' – but if you ask your friends or colleagues whether they know what income protection is, we expect that you might be met with a blank look.

The Money Advice Service backs the consideration of this type of insurance too, they say that “each year one million people in the UK find themselves unable to work due to a serious illness or injury. Income protection insurance is designed to give you some cover if you can’t earn an income for those reasons.

If something happened to you would you be able to survive on savings, or on sick pay from work? If not, you’ll need some other way to keep paying the bills and you might want to consider income protection insurance”.

Nevertheless, it seems that not many of us know about this type of insurance. A recent study carried out by Royal London found that there is a lack of awareness about income protection and that the under 35s age group seem to be putting off consideration of this type of insurance, sadly often until it is too late.

If you get ill and you are unable to work, inevitably you will lose your income, unfortunately, when this happens, as well as trying to take care of yourself, you will still have outgoings to take care of such as your mortgage, rent and other bills. And that’s where income protection comes in. It’s designed to replace a proportion of your income if you can’t work and suffer a loss of earnings due to illness or injury.

Income protection can help you and your family maintain your standard of living by helping to pay for regular household outgoings. This can give peace of mind during challenging times when recovery can take months – and sometimes even years.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, mixed anxiety and depression have been estimated to cause one-fifth of days lost from work in Britain and in May last year the CIPD Wellbeing at Work survey suggested more than a fifth of organisations cited mental illness as the primary cause of long-term absence.

When Karen’s fiancé died suddenly in 2017, she found it difficult to cope. But an income protection policy she’d taken out years earlier helped her to carry on.

“I never realised the impact that it would have on me,” she says. “How difficult it is to carry on a normal life. Doing the job I do requires lots of energy; it requires you standing up in front of people, and I wasn’t in the right place to do that.” At first, Karen says she didn’t even think about claiming on her insurance because she assumed it was for physical injuries or illnesses, not for mental wellbeing. But then she spoke to her insurer and found out she could claim.

“It was such a weight off my shoulders,” she says. “It meant that I could pay my bills and not have to worry about day-to-day finances when I had lots of other things to worry about at the time.”

“You never think these things are going to happen to you when you take out your insurance. But looking back, that relatively small outlay meant peace of mind in the long run – and it’s been so worth it.”

“You never know what’s around the corner but if you’re thinking about whether to take out protection, think about yourself. Think about your family. If you never need to claim, then consider yourself one of the lucky ones. But don’t think of it as a waste of money because it’s not. It’s given you peace of mind. It’s a safety net.”

Karen never thought the worst would happen to her, but it did, and sadly mental illness can strike at any time in your life – a staggering 70 million work days are lost each year due to mental health problems in the UK.

This is why experts agree that whatever your age, if you are working, income protection is insurance that is worth considering – you never know what’s around the corner and as Karen has told us “that relatively small outlay meant peace of mind in the long run”.

For advice and a recommendation about which income protection policy will best suit your needs, you can contact our income protection experts here at Essential Insurance on 0800 612 8005.