Income protection for doctors & surgeons

As a doctor or surgeon, you'll know better than anyone that ill health or an accident can happen to anyone at anytime. When it does, the financial consequences can be devastating. Whilst we can't stop you getting ill, we can help protect you financially by paying you tax free cash each month if you become too unwell to work. And after years of hard work to build a career as a medical professional, it's essential insurance to have.

You choose the amount of cover you need, and we pay you when you can't do your job as a doctor or surgeon. It's as simple as that. Our sickness insurance, called Income Protection, has been enhanced with special features designed for doctors and surgeons, and offers special rates, as we recognise your needs are slightly different from most people.

The special features include:

NHS sick pay guarantee
Increased benefit guarantee of £3,000
Sabbatical cover
No HIV/AIDS exclusions
Overseas Cover

LV= NHS sick pay guarantee

If you’re a doctor or surgeon working for the NHS you’ll find that within the first five years the amount of time you get NHS sick pay for changes every year. It starts off small and grows over five years. This makes it difficult to choose how long you'd want your income protection to pay out for.

If you become too ill to do your job in the first 4 months, you'll get 100% of your benefit amount after just 1 month.

If you’ve chosen a waiting period of 12 months – and then If you’re unable to work because of accident or sickness, we’ll automatically begin payments once the NHS stops paying you. To benefit from this you’ll need to be directly employed by the NHS and licensed to practice with the General Medical Council in the UK.

Note: this only applies if you’ve chosen a waiting period of 12 months.

£3,000 benefit guarantee

The amount of cover you can have depends on how much you're earning. With most income protection products there is a risk that your income may fall once you've taken out cover, if this happens you could be 'over-insured' and not get the cover you've paid for.

With our £3,000 benefit guarantee it doesn’t matter if your income has fallen because of a change of jobs or roles when you come to make a claim. As long as you’re normally working at least 32 hours a week before you claim, we guarantee to pay at least £3,000 a month in benefit or the full amount you’re insured for if lower, less any continuing income you’re still receiving.

Please note that we will deduct any payments from other accident and sickness cover you may have.

The aim of the benefit guarantee is to protect you against a genuine drop in your income after you take out your policy. If you weren't earning enough when your policy started to support the amount of cover you chose, then we reserve the right not to apply the benefit guarantee.

Sabbatical break cover

Many doctors and surgeons will consider taking a sabbatical, perhaps to study, gain experience, participate in charity work or just take a break. With our enhanced income protection product they can now keep full cover in place if they take a sabbatical of up to two years.

Regardless of which country you're located in or the activity you're undertaking, if you fell ill or had an accident during this period, that would stop you performing their normal role, we would still pay your claim. In addition we'd treat your claim date as the date you became ill or had an accident, not when you were due to return to work.

No HIV/AIDS exclusion

Needlestick injuries are one of the most common occupational hazards faced by doctors and surgeons. And whilst the risk is small, you can be reassured to know that we don't have exclusions for HIV/AIDS.

Overseas cover

If you have to work overseas for a while in the future as part of your job our protection is flexible enough to accommodate that. Plus, you can make a claim if you’re overseas (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand) for the full length of your policy. Outside of the mentioned countries, you can still claim for up to 26 weeks, then you should move to an eligible area to be able to continue claiming.