Guides & News

When you are employed you can sometimes have security of income protection from your employer, or at the very least statutory sick pay. When you are self-employed you have nothing to give you that buffer of supporting income. That’s why income protection is probably more important for self-employed people, than anyone else.

Life insurance is one of the simplest policies to arrange. It is pretty straightforward, if you die while the policy is active it will pay out money to your loved ones.

When you apply for life insurance insurers are always looking for any risks that could make you more likely to make a claim on an insurance policy. This is because they want to make sure that they fully understand things like your health, travel, job and sports that you do.

For a politically exposed person (PEP) there are some additional risks in the background that insurers want to keep an eye on. I am going to explain some of the key reasons that you might have found that getting life insurance isn’t easy.

Having well controlled blood pressure does not usually cause any problems for life insurance. You can often have quite a simple application process and have terms for life insurance offered to you quickly.

When you tell an insurer that you have diabetes or pre-diabetes they are going to ask about your current HbA1C reading and when this was taken, usually the month and year.

A problem that we see some yacht crew members facing is that they don’t pay UK tax. For new income protection policies in the UK the insurer will want you to be paying UK tax. A lot of yacht crew get seafarers earning deduction and this can mean that many insurers will not be able to offer you income protection.

Just because one insurer has said that they can’t insure it doesn’t mean that all of them will say this. So if you are told no, it doesn’t mean that is a no for life insurance everywhere.

When you apply for life insurance in the UK, most insurers will ask if you have ever had cancer. This will then lead to some extra questions if you have had breast cancer. Some of these questions will be to you and some will be for your GP.