Would you be able to carry on paying the bills using statutory sick pay or your savings?

Consider how you would cover your usual monthly costs if you were ill or injured and couldn’t work for a while. Would you be able to carry on paying the bills using statutory sick pay or your savings? If not, it’s worth thinking about.

Three in five people with the right protection in place would feel more financially resilient if they had a policy that paid if they were unable to work due to illness or injury, research highlights[1]. That is why is it so important for people to obtain professional financial advice and find a protection solution to protect themselves and family.

Financial position
Protecting income should be at the heart of building financial resilience. But worryingly, 45% of 25-44-year-olds without a protection policy are not confident they could financially cope if they fell ill. Over a quarter (28%) of workers in this age group would struggle to pay household bills if they were unable to work for two months or more.

Half also say their partner relies on their income, and they need both incomes to cover their monthly outgoings. So as the cost of living crisis bites, it is even more important to ensure we have the right conversations with customers about their financial position if they are unable to work.

Disposable income
The research also highlights that almost half of people surveyed are not confident they could cope financially if they fell ill. This lines up with UK savings statistics which tell us that 41% of Britons don’t have enough savings to live for one month without income.

Nobody wants to worry about how they would cope financially if they were ill or injured and couldn’t work. The reality is, with the likelihood of disposable income in real terms going to contract for many people, this makes protection even more crucial.

Source data:
[1] LV= surveyed 4,000 nationally representative UK adults via an online omnibus conducted by Opinium between 16th August and 1st September 2022.