Income protection insurers must up their game

Back in 2009 I looked into getting this, when my then employer started making redundancies. But knowing my luck, I just assumed they’d find a way to not pay out. The stress of knowing but waiting even caused me to have a nervous breakdown/panic attacks. And as it turns out I was made redundant in 2010 (which sparked the breakdown off again) during the 3rd wave of redundancies ( after each wave they’d say we have no plans to make any more, but we all knew they would). Since then I’ve been unemployed 19 months now, and have not had a penny in benefits from the government as in the 25 years I was paying tax I didn’t blow it all and therefore am deemed not to qualify for it. Moral seems to be spend all the money you have as soon as you get it then the government will happily throw more your way 🙁

Big thank you to Which for highlighting these useless income protection policies. As the person behind the Angry Policyholder and scotprovsaysno campaign trying to have these policies either banned or for insurers to offer ‘own occupation’ to all policyholders I am very grateful for this article. As a consumer you buy a product with the faith that it will do what its supposed to do. If you buy an income protection policy the clue is in the name that in the event you cannot work due to ill health this product will provide you with a tax free sum normally up to 75% of your income prior to your claim.

Assisted daily living (ADL) definitions are an unfair way of assessing somebody’s ability to work. I was in hospital for 3 months in 3 hospitals where I had to deal with the stress of being incorrectly diagnosed with two serious medical conditions, picking up an infection and also getting a large PE due to being bedbound for so long. I was in a critical state and the only people who disagreed was my insurer who said if I could hold a pen this policy would not pay out. I don’t know what job I was supposed to do whilst in hospital and the fact I was readmitted within 24hrs of of my final discharge shows I had serious problems.

What I am so angry about is that I had to fight for 2.5 years to win my claim and when I started my Twitter and Facebook campaign was devistated to find out that experts knew all about these policies and how they were not worth the paper they are written on. This has been a talking point for over 6 years yet the industry failed to act and the reason could be that they make in excess of £150 million pounds a year in premiums with the full knowledge they will hardly ever have to payout. The industry claims that they have no choice but to offer these useless policies as it gives choice and value to manual workers but this argument falls down when you find out friendly insurers offer ‘own occupations’ to all their policyholders at competitive prices and have the best payout percentages compared with the industry average. In their own words they don’t want to aurgue over if you can climb stairs or hold a pen, if you can’t work they want to pay out who are also their owners/members.

All I can hope for is that my case and determination to stop another person or family going through this works but even though my campaign has helped make this one of the hottest topics within the insurance industry people a sad recent case highlighted a dying man who needed round the clock care was also refused a payout on one of these policies. How ill do you have to be? I just wish and hope that Which? can finally get this story into the broadcast media and finally tell the public how these policies leave policyholders in desperate circumstances because these policies are worthless. I am exchausted and having to go back into hospital and Monday so will have to stop campaigning for a while. Fingers crossed.