Income protection help and FAQs

Protecting your future is important. LV= Income Protection can help protect your income and make sure that money is there when you need it most.

Here are some commonly asked questions about our Income Protection.

How to make a claim?

Please get in touch with us as soon as possible by calling us on 0845 605 7930 (for textphone dial 18001 first) and we’ll let you know what the next steps are, including any information we need and why we need it. You can find more detailed information on our claims page.You can also find information regarding claims we've paid.

What is Income Protection?

Income Protection is designed to pay you a regular income if you are unable to work due to sickness or accident. See our facts about income protection page for more detail. You can also view our do you need income protection page to see if this product is something you may want to consider.

Is my benefit tax-free?

Claims paid from this policy will not be subject to either Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax.

This is based on our understanding of current legislation and HM Revenue & Customs practice, which can change.

Do I get any money back if I don’t claim before the end of the policy?

No. The policy is designed to pay out only if you're unable to work due to accident or sickness during the term of your policy. Once your policy has reached its end date, your cover stops, and you won’t get anything back.

Do you take dividends as income?

Your income can include dividend income from your business as long as:

the dividend income is clearly related to your work activities
the frequency of dividend payments must be of an established pattern, rather than irregular one-off payments.
the dividends are paid from annual profits net of tax. If the dividends are higher than the profit figure, we will use the net profit figure instead.

Your income can also include dividends paid to your spouse or civil partner as long as they are also a shareholder, and they don't take over the running of the business. Any dividends paid to your spouse or civil partner must be appropriate for their level of shareholding, and must have been declared for tax purposes. However if your spouse or civil partner has used the same dividend income for their own income protection cover, it can't also be included in your income.

Do you cover average income over more than 12 months?

Yes, if you're self-employed we'll usually take an average of your income over three years. If you're employed, we'll usually take an average of your income you received from your occupation in the 12 months before you became unable to work.

However, we'll try to work with you and may agree to look at longer or shorter periods. For example, we might do this if we can see that your income varies considerably due to the nature of your business, or if you've suffered a deteriorating illness that finally resulted in you going off sick.

If you have a question which isn't answered above, you might like to search our interactive FAQs.

If you still can't find the answer you're looking for, you can contact us.

Please note that if your question is specific to your plan and not covered above, you may need to refer to your original plan documents or call one of our trained service advisers.

You can phone us
Call our UK-based advisers for more information or a quote:

0800 756 8523
Quoting offer code IELO

Textphone: 18001 0800 756 8523

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We offer advice on LV= products only

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