Income Protection

Government should encourage greater take-up of income protection (IP) to relieve the burden on the taxpayer and Treasury and improve attitudes to the welfare state, MPs heard yesterday.

With over 300,000 employees moving from work to state sickness benefits, and many employers looking to reduce sick pay within the next year, income protection 'must not be ignored', PG Mutual has said.

Unum has launched Sick Pay Insurance (SPI), a new group protection product to help employers and employees manage short breaks from work due to illness and injury.

Nearly one in five (19%) of people in the UK aged 16 and over have displayed some forms of anxiety or depression, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has found.

Labour says that it may consider offering incentives for firms providing health and wellbeing benefits to staff and to those organisations paying a living wage were it to win the next general election.

Britain's manufacturing firms are losing faith that the government's ‘fit note' programme is delivering on getting people back to work and further action is needed from policymakers, a survey has urged.

The British income protection (IP) market should learn from some of the mistakes made by the Australian market in recent years, Gen Re has said.

The government's programme of disability benefit reforms have been introduced across the UK.

Employee benefits must be overhauled as they have failed to adapt to a changing workforce leaving workers financially exposed, a report has urged.

Employers closing Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes should revisit their sickness provision to avoid a costly ‘protection gap', warns Group Risk Development (GRiD.)