Critical illness insurance and Unemployment cover

In the current financial turmoil, with thousands of people being made redundant every week in the UK, Unemployment cover is becoming more and more popular. Are you one of the 40% of British people who have less than a month of salary set aside if the worst happens?

Read the insurance policy documentation very carefully. No two UK insurance policies for unemployment are the same and there will be one that will be more tailored to your needs than all the others. Once you have allotted to go with a particular unemployment cover there will usually be a cooling off period (usually 2 weeks), during which you may cancel your policy with no cost to you provided, of course, you have not claimed on your insurance cover in this period. Also note that you will have to hold an unemployment insurance policy for a period of time before it becomes valid. This is to stop people taking a policy out only when they feel that their unemployment is imminent or that they have heard that it is likely. Currently few insurance companies are offering unemployment only insurance cover and these are disappearing quickly.

Mortgage payment protection insurance or MPPI is similar to unemployment insurance and allows you to protect yourself against redundancy and / or accident and sickness and providing you with a degree of insurance assistance with your mortgage repayments.

As with unemployment cover a number of caveats apply. If you are made redundant or formally put at risk of redundancy within a certain time period of taking out your insurance policy your insurer will reject your claim. This time period is usually of the order of 4-6 months, but check each insurance policy before you buy. The unemployment only insurance cover will usually pay out for only a set period of time, often a year. Check all the small print to insure that you qualify before taking out an insurance policy.

Critical illness insurance usually covers you for death or surviving a critical illness like for example cancer. Again like all other policies it is good to compare different insurance policies and understand what the definition of critical illness is. No one knows what disease might strike them down, but ask yourself questions like.

What is the insurance company's definition of critical illness.
What illnesses are covered.
Might this be regarded as a pre-existing condition.
How would the insurance company feel about you going back to work again and still claiming.

If you have decided to go ahead and get an unemployment insurance quote or here are some hints and tips that may reduce the cost of your insurance premium.

• Shop around you will find that getting several insurance quotes will lead to a wide range of prices.
• Don't be tempted to go with the first unemployment insurance quote.
• Unemployment only insurance products are disappearing off the market, you may have to be quick to get one.

The unemployment cover on this site allows you to protect yourself against redundancy, accident and sickness, or accident and sickness only, or unemployment only insurance . this flexibility allows you to decide which is the best policy for you.

There are several names for this type of cover and they can get confusing. ASU - Accident, Sickness and Unemployment Insurance Cover covers these three situations or one or two of Accident Sickness or Unemployment. ASU can also be called Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance or MPPI the idea being that it will pay your mortgage in the event of unemployment. They can also be referred to as Income Protection Cover depending on whether you intend the unemployment insurance policy is to protection your income or cover your mortgage in the event of unemployment or accident or sickness.

You may notice that there is a great difference between the costs of various unemployment insurance cover policies in the marketplace. Often the cost of insurance policies offered by the company arranging your mortgage will be many times that of insurance policies that you can find in the rest of the market. You will probably find that UK unemployment insurance sold by your mortgage arranger and unemployment cover arranged by yourself will have very similar features, but you should always satisfy yourself that this is the case before entering into a financially binding arrangement. In particular checking that you are eligible for the insurance cover, what the insurer regards as unemployment, for how long will the insurance policy pay out and how soon after taking out the employment insurance policy can redundancy take place and the insurance policy be regarded as valid.