We’ve helped many NHS doctors and other medical professionals set up appropriate Income Protection over the years. This provides a monthly income worth between 50% and 70% of your gross earnings if you’re too ill or injured to do your specific job.
With comprehensive, long-term cover, the insurer pays this benefit for as long as you need, right up until you retire if you can never work again. You use it to keep up with your mortgage / rent and other essential monthly outgoings.
We understand the unique position medical professionals are in when considering Income Protection. This arises largely because of your generous staggered NHS sick pay and the additional needs you have as a doctor, such as HIV cover.
Policies Just Keep Getting Better…
Every year the insurers get better at tailoring their cover for specific professions and there is a lot they do specifically for doctors. This guide should help to give you a better understanding of the income protection market for doctors in 2024 including an overview of each providers specific benefits.
If you need help please don’t hesitate to pop us a call on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk. You can also get instant online quotes from all of the leading UK insurers here if you want to compare pricing →
Locum or Working in the Private Sector?
All doctors and medical professionals can get Income Protection, regardless of whether you work for the NHS or privately. However, it works slightly differently for locums and private practitioners as they don’t get NHS sick pay. To skip the next bit about Income Protection and NHS sick pay, click here.
How Income Protection Works With NHS Sick Pay
NHS sick pay is far better than is the case from other employers. This puts NHS doctors and other medical professionals in a good position when seeking Income Protection.
Your generous sick pay entitlement means you can extend your deferred period, the time you must wait between you falling ill and receiving a payout. Longer deferred periods mean cheaper premiums 👍.
Your NHS Sick Pay Entitlement and Income Protection
Exactly how Income Protection works with NHS sick pay depends on the provider you choose, but to take one insurer as an example:
- Imagine you have 5 years+ of NHS service and get 6 months of full sick pay and 6 months of half sick pay.
- When you take out cover, you set your deferred period to 12 months.
- Later, you fall ill and need time off work — the NHS pays full sick pay for 6 months.
- After 6 months, if you still can’t work your NHS sick pay falls by half. At this point, the insurer starts to pay out a proportion of your benefit to top up your reduced sick pay.
- If you’re still unable to work after 12 months, NHS sick pay stops. However, your insurer starts paying out your full benefit to replace your earnings.
I Work as a Locum / in the Private Sector — Can I Get Cover?
Yes, locum doctors and those practising in the private sector can get Income Protection. It might work slightly differently depending on who your employer is.
Income Protection for Locum Doctors
In our experience, locum doctors tend to work in one of two ways: For themselves or for a GP practice / a hospital trust. There are different ways to secure Income Protection depending on how you work.
Working for Yourself
Director Income Protection might be a good consideration for locums working through their own limited company. Depending on your circumstances, your limited company might be able to own and pay for the policy. This can offer tax savings over paying for the policy individually.
If you do work this way, Income Protection is particularly important because you’re unlikely to get any sick pay if you’re ill or injured.
Working for an Employer
Other locums work for a medical practice or an NHS trust. If that’s the case, check the sick pay you’re entitled to. You could be entitled to NHS sick pay or other occupational sick pay. Once you know how much sick pay you get — if any — we can tailor a policy to your needs.
Income Protection for Doctors in the Private Sector
If you work 100% in the private sector, you probably don’t get the same generous level of sick pay as NHS doctors. That means you’ll likely have to set a shorter deferred period to match the sick pay you do get.
We also help medical professionals who work for both the NHS and the private sector with income from each employer. While this can make arranging cover slightly trickier, it’s perfectly possible to find a policy or policies that cover both income streams.
You might have one policy to protect a proportion of your NHS income that aligns with your NHS sick pay entitlement, and another which protects your private income. As long as you work more than 16 hours per week in each role, this isn’t normally much of a hurdle to overcome.
Enhanced Terms You Can Get With Doctors Income Protection
It’s not just NHS sick pay that makes Income Protection for doctors, surgeons and other medical professionals different to other employees.
Insurers offer specialist Income Protection policies just for medical professionals with a number of key features that aren’t available on a general policy or are enhanced with doctors etc. in mind.
Key features to look out for include:
NHS Sick Pay Match
Also known as NHS sick pay mirroring or a split deferred period, this lets you to extend your deferred period (the time you wait between falling ill and receiving a payout) to match your NHS sick pay. Longer deferred periods save money on premiums.
Sabbatical Cover
Take a break from the policy but still retain cover if you want to work / study / volunteer at home or abroad, take time out to raise a family or for any other reason.
Needle Stick Injury Cover
No exclusions if you contract a blood-borne disease such as HIV due to a workplace incident, for example a needle-stick injury.
Income Guarantee
All insurers base the size of your monthly benefit on your earnings immediately prior to a claim. If your income falls between taking out the cover and claiming, the insurer will pay a lower benefit based on your immediate pre-incapacity earnings.
However, with an income guarantee, the insurer promises to pay out a set figure or your chosen monthly benefit, even if your income just before a claim doesn’t justify this.
Many providers of Income Protection for doctors have enhanced income guarantees especially for medical professionals.
Hospitalisation Benefit
Pays out a set amount for each night you spend as a hospital inpatient above a certain number of nights.
Overseas Cover
Cover if you live or work abroad for a period of time.
Additional Benefits
Other key benefits insurers often provide free with Income Protection include:
- Remote GP services
24 / 7 access to a UK-registered GP (perfect if you’re on nights!) via your smartphone. The doctor can write prescriptions and onward referrals for treatment if necessary.
- Mental health support
Doctors and other medical professionals are really going through it at the moment. For those finding themselves stressed and anxious due to their current relentless workload, some insurers offer mental health services from trained counsellors.
- Digital physiotherapy
Fast access to physiotherapists and online resources to tackle back and joint pain caused by hours on your feet.
Couldn’t I Just Claim My NHS Pension Early Instead of Income Protection?
If you need to stop working early, you might get an ill health pension from the NHS.
However, the NHS pension scheme is complicated. Its rules differ depending on your length of service, your level of incapacity and when you started paying into the scheme.
For example, your entitlement to an ill health pension varies slightly depending on whether you’re a member of the 1995, 2008 or 2015 pension scheme.
You could get an early payment of the retirement benefits you’ve accrued up to the date of your incapacity if you’re “permanently incapable of carrying out the duties of your job”. This is subject to medical assessment.
Yet the pension you get might be less than what you would have received had you been able to work right up until retirement.
The important piece here is that you need to be permanently incapable of doing your job. The pension would not cover an illness or injury which you should recover from and so it should not be relied upon as income protection.
IMPORTANT NOTICE 🧐
Early payment of your NHS pension due to ill health depends on your circumstances. Seek expert advice before considering ill health early retirement from any pension scheme.
Why NHS Dentist Rajpreet Took Out Income Protection…
NHS dentist Rajpreet qualified in 2013 and has worked for various NHS dental surgeries in his hometown of Wolverhampton.
He signed up for Income Protection as soon as he finished his dental training with a well-known mutual provider who visited campus, as did most of his classmates. However, worried that the policy only offered minimal coverage, Rajpreet turned to Drewberry to see if he could get better protection.
Rajpreet’s adviser found him a better policy with Aviva, which takes into account his NHS sick pay. It will pay a benefit of £3,000 — indexed to keep up with inflation — each month right up until his 60th birthday if he can never work again.
![Rajpreet's story]()
How Much Will It Cost Each Month?
With Income Protection, the price depends on various personal and policy factors.
For example, your age, smoker status and state of health will impact your premiums. These are difficult to change — after all, you can’t magically make yourself younger, no matter how hard you try!
It’s why it pays to take out Income Protection early. Premiums are cheaper when you’re younger and most providers let you to lock in monthly payments at that low level for the entire plan.
Other important factors which affect premiums relate to your chosen policy options.
For example, you’ll need to decide the income you want each month (your benefit); how long you need the policy to pay out for (your payout period); and your retirement date (your policy cease age). All impact the cost of cover.
Example Monthly Premiums
With so many things to consider, the cost of Income Protection is different for any given individual. However, to offer a rough idea of premiums for a doctor and a surgeon, we’ve pulled Income Protection quotes from our online calculator.
To do this we’ve assumed that each individual is:
Why Do Insurers Charge Surgeons More Than Doctors?
Surgeons tend to have higher premiums than doctors because of the nature of their role. They require dexterity in their hands and the ability to stand and concentrate for hours in theatre.
That means more minor illnesses or injuries, which also tend to be more likely, therefore have a higher chance of stopping a surgeon working than is true for a GP, for example.
If a surgeon crushes their hand in a car accident, they may never be able to do their specific job again. However, with treatment and workplace adjustments, a GP could still likely continue to work.
To reflect this greater risk, insurers charge surgeons slightly more.
A Comparison Of The Top 5 UK Doctors Income Protection Policies 2021
There are five main UK Income Protection providers which we place medical professionals with. They aim their policies specifically at doctors, surgeons, dentists, nurses and midwives.
The table below lists the five best Income Protection policies for doctors and key details about them to help give you an idea of which insurer might be right for you.
I Already Have Income Protection — Should I Review It?
Absolutely.
Over the years, we’ve seen many clients who arranged doctors Income Protection straight out of medical school with a visiting insurer and haven’t touched it since.
Firstly, the market moved on considerably over the years. There are now a number of new Income Protection policies for doctors that could offer better coverage, cheaper premiums — or both!
Secondly, if you’ve been practising medicine for years, your circumstances have no doubt have changed since you were a young junior doctor. For example:
- Has your salary increased?
- Do you get more NHS sick pay now than when you first started out?
- Have your outgoings changed, meaning you’d need a different benefit?
- What about important life events — do you need to take into account new dependents or cover higher mortgage payments?
Just like Rajpreet, it’s unlikely that what you arranged straight out of medical school still works for you today.
Your needs might have changed or the policy might not offer the best coverage at the best price. It doesn’t hurt to revisit existing plans and compare the market — you might be surprised at the results!
Are There Any Exclusions?
As with most insurance policies, there are a few automatic exclusions for everyone. For instance, most policies don’t pay out for illnesses or injuries sustained:
- During criminal activity
- From illegal / illicit drug use, substance abuse or alcohol misuse
- During foreign travel to areas of active internal conflict, high terrorism risk, political instability or countries the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised against visiting.
Other than these, there are few standard exclusions. Instead, your insurer determines coverage based on your pre-existing medical history.
Does It Cover Pre-Existing Conditions?
When you apply for cover, your insurer asks you medical questions. These focus on your health, particularly over the past 5 years. If you disclose a medical condition, your insurer might:
- Cover the condition on standard terms (so you won’t face any difference in premiums or policy terms than a healthy person)
- Cover the condition for an additional premium
- Exclude the condition but offer a date at which it will consider reviewing the exclusion
- Exclude that condition entirely (perhaps with a premium discount to compensate).
How Do I Make a Claim?
These steps offer a basic overview for making an Income Protection claim:
- An accident / sickness stops you working.
- Contact your insurer as soon as this happens.
- Fill in a claims form — most providers let you do this online. You’ll need medical evidence of your disability and may have to prove your income immediately prior to your illness.
- Wait out your policy’s deferral period. For NHS doctors, your deferral period works with NHS sick pay. When your NHS sick falls to half pay, the insurer pays half your benefit to top up the ongoing half pay you get from the NHS.
- After your NHS sick pay ends, if you still can’t do your job the insurer starts paying out your full benefit.
- Receive benefits until you recover and return to work, reach your claims limit (for short-term protection) or reach your cease age (for long-term protection).
For more information on how to make an Income Protection claim, click here
The Power of Advice When Looking for Doctors Income Protection…
If you’re looking for Income Protection for doctors, surgeons and other NHS medical professionals — including dentists, midwives and nurses — you’ll firstly want to look at specialist providers.
They offer policies that work with your job, such as enhanced NHS sick pay, or other circumstances common for doctors, such as wanting to take a sabbatical to work / volunteer abroad.
Getting covered if you are a doctor, surgeon or similar therefore tends to involve additional factors to consider and more moving parts to the policy than for other types of workers. It’s here having an expert in your corner can really pay off.
Why Speak to Us?
We started Drewberry™ because we were tired of being treated like a number.
We all deserve a first class service when it comes to issues as important as protecting our health and our finances. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.
At Drewberry, we offer free-free Income Protection advice to doctors and other medical professionals. To discuss your needs with an expert adviser, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’re available on 02084327333 or you can email help@drewberry.co.uk.
