It is important to realise that you do have options for buying loan protection insurance and to know about the differences. The vast majority of policies are sold alongside the loan when taking it out, however you can also choose to buy a policy at a later date after taking the loan. By choosing to shop for a protection policy yourself you can make around 80% savings on the cost of the premiums.



Loan protection insurance is a policy that is taken out to insure against the fact that you might lose your income. A loss of income can come about due to you suffering an accident or an illness which meant you were unable to work. A policy would also include you being made unemployed through reasons not of your own such as redundancy. The cover would payout an income that was tax-free which would allow you the luxury of being able to continue meeting your loan/credit card repayments using the money you insured for when taking out the policy.

If you were to lose your income and have substantial loan or credit card repayments to make then life could become an uphill struggle if you wanted to remain debt free. It is important to keep out of debt as at the very least you would see your credit rating destroyed. If this happens then for sometime in the future you could have many problems obtaining credit of any kind and a bad credit file can take a long time to repair. In the worst cases of debt the lender could take you to court and this means that you could have a County Court Judgement against you and have bailiffs come into your home to take your possession to sell to recover what you owe. For a small premium you can guard against any of this happening by keeping up with your mortgage repayments as though you were still working.

If you have the protection added into the cost of the loan then the lender could add interest on top of it and this could almost double the cost of the borrowing. Another downside to taking out protection this way is that often little information is given regarding exclusions and the other terms and conditions of the policy.

Taking out the protection with a standalone provider you will be given access to all the information on their website which would allow you to ensure a policy would be suitable. When choosing a policy there are many things that need taking onto account besides the exclusions, you need to know if cover would be backdated and when and for how long it would payout. All of these can differ with independent payment protection specialists.

Some providers offer a loan protection insurance policy with the conditions that you wait for the 30th day before claiming. With others it could be as long as the 90th day. Some will continue paying out for 12 months and with other providers payment could last for 24 months.