Planning for clients and forgetting yourself
Financial advisers spend their careers helping others plan for illness, retirement and death. Your own cover can slip to the bottom of the list. Yet your income is tied closely to your ability to meet clients, research recommendations, write suitability reports and keep up with regulatory change.
The work is sedentary and screen-based, with client meetings in offices or homes. Illness is far more likely than injury to stop you working, with mental health and back and neck problems leading the list. Compliance pressure and file reviews add their own strain.
Self-employed, appointed or employed
Advisers work in many ways. Some are employed by banks, building societies or national firms and receive sick pay and death in service. Others are self-employed under a network or own a small firm, with no sick pay at all.
If you earn from new business and ongoing fees, a long absence will hit new business first. Ongoing fees may continue for a time, but clients who need regular reviews could drift to another adviser. That is worth thinking about when you choose a deferred period.
- Employed: check sick pay and group cover
- Self-employed: plan for new business stopping on day one
- Firm owner: consider business protection alongside personal cover
Protecting the advice business
If you own an advice firm, your client bank is usually its most valuable asset. Key person cover can pay the firm a sum to recruit or buy in help if you are off for months. Shareholder protection lets surviving owners buy your shares, giving your family the value of what you built.
These policies sit alongside your personal income protection and life cover. You already understand them in theory. We can help you put them in place properly, with trusts and agreements set up correctly.
Occupation rating for advisers
Insurers group occupations by risk, which affects both price and the incapacity definition. Financial advisers usually sit in the lower-risk groups and can often get own occupation cover, so the claim is judged on whether you can work as an adviser.
You already know the products, so you will want to compare the detail: definitions, exclusions, how benefit is calculated for self-employed earnings and whether the premium is guaranteed or reviewable.
A second opinion on your own cover
Arranging protection for yourself is awkward. It is hard to be objective, and some firms have rules about advising on your own policies. Using an independent broker gives you a clear view on the options.
We compare the whole panel for you and give advice on your own situation, from how much benefit you can insure to how to protect the firm.