Loan protection insurance is a Godsend if you are unable to work or suffer an illness or an accident that means you cannot work. It would also be there for you if you should become a victim of unemployment due to such as being made redundant. In any of these cases it would mean that without an income coming into the home you would not have the money to continue meeting your loan/credit card repayments. As a result you would fall into arrears and have to come to an agreement with the lender to catch up. If you cannot then you are faced with the consequences which differ depending on the type of loan you took out and how much you owe.

If you have taken out a secured loan then of course your home is at risk of being repossessed by the lender if you cannot come to an agreement with them to catch up on the arrears. Unsecured loan arrears could result in the lender taking you to court to seek your possessions to pay off the lender. All loan arrears will mean that your credit file is affected and this can stop you from obtaining credit of any kind in the future as you are seen as a huge risk.

Usually when you take on a borrowing the lender will try to get you to take out loan protection insurance for the payments. However in the majority of cases this is anything but a cheap way to protect the money you are borrowing. Usually the cost of insurance will be high and in some cases the lender will add in the cost to cover the entire loan over the period you have taken it and then add on interest on top of it. This can is some cases boost up the loan by almost half again and suddenly the loan is not cheap anymore. High street lenders do this because payment protection brings in around £4 billion each year which helps them to recover what is lost by offering loans with cheap rates of interest.

You do have another option when taking out loan protection insurance and that is to take it out with a standalone payment protection provider. An independent provider will only sell payment protection products and they offer much cheaper monthly premiums. The premium will be based on the amount of the loan that you wish to cover each month and your age when applying for a policy. Age based premiums of course mean the younger you are the cheaper you will get the protection for.

Loan protection insurance would start to pay an income to the policyholder after the period of time stated in the terms of the policy. Usually providers ask you defer from making a claim until between the 30th and the 90th day of being unemployed or incapacitated. Once you have put in a claim and have begun getting an income you would then continue to receive it for either 12 monthly payments or 24 payments, at one each month and then the cover would cease.