Guardian Income Protection Insurance [REVIEW]

Who Are Guardian?

Guardian was founded in 1821 as a provider of life and fire insurance. Over the past 200 years, it has gone on to offer a range of financial and insurance services.

However, it was only in 2023 that Guardian launched its own Income Protection product. Its mission is to provide families with clear, comprehensive policies that pay out quickly.

Despite this product being relatively new to the market, it has already been rated 5 stars by Defaqto.

Guardian’s Income Protection is still fairly new to the market. However, Guardian is known for offering comprehensive plans with many extra benefits.

This is shown through their award-winning Life Insurance product and access to a 24/7 remote GP service.

Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry

Guardian’s Income Protection

Guardian has recently launched their Income Protection offering. It can be taken out on its own, or as part of a menu plan alongside other products. For instance, Life Insurance and Critical Illness Cover.

Policy Overview

• A policy that comes with a competitive selection of additional features and support services included for free
• Provides a Minimum Cover Guarantee. If your wages drop between you taking out the policy and claiming, you’re guaranteed to get the lower of your chosen benefit or £1,500
• Choice of benefit payment periods, with either 2 years or full term to the policy end date.

What Does Guardian’s Income Protection Cover?

Despite it being relatively new, Guardian’s Income Protection policy offers a competitive range of features and benefits.

Key Policy Factors

High Monthly Benefit

Guardian will cover 45% of your earnings above £100,000, up to a maximum benefit of £250,000 per year.

This makes them one of the highest in the industry. We often recommend Guardian to very high earners.

Good Package Of Free Additional Benefits

Guardian Anytime and Guardian HALO combine to make a good package of free extra benefits. Guardian Anytime includes access to 24/7 remote GP service, which only a handful of other Income Protection providers offer. Meanwhile, Guardian HALO offers an extensive range of rehabilitation support, including vocational rehabilitation services.

Minimum Cover Guarantee

Like all insurers, Guardian bases your Income Protection benefit on your income. If your income decreases, you may only be entitled to a smaller benefit as a result. However, Guardian’s cover guarantee means that if your salary falls after your policy has started, your benefit won’t necessarily fall as well.

If your benefit is £1,500 a month or less, Guardian will still pay your chosen monthly benefit in full. To qualify for this, you must have been working at least 24 hours a week if you’re self-employed, or 30 hours a week if you’re employed.

Automatic Waiver Of Premium

Guardian automatically includes waiver of premium cover in the event you can’t work. It starts paying your premiums after 28 days, even if your deferred period to claim is longer.

Split Deferral Period For Doctors, Surgeons, Nurses and Midwives

Guardian understands that certain professionals within the NHS receive 6 months of full sick pay, followed by six months of half sick pay. Such professionals can therefore choose a deferral period of 52 weeks before they receive their full benefit.

However, you can start getting some of your benefit after six months, when your full sick pay falls to half pay. Then, when your NHS sick pay stops, you will receive your full benefit.

Increasing / Indexed Cover Available

Guardian offers optional index-linked Income Protection. If you choose this, your benefit amount will increase with inflation based on the Consumer Prices Index.

If your benefit increases, Guardian also increases your premiums. These will rise by the percentage increase in the benefit amount multiplied by 1.5.

If needed, you can decide to skip an increase. However, if you skip three increases in a row, Guardian removes the indexation from your plan and changes it to level cover for the rest of the policy term.

Bradley Fedarb
Independent Protection Advisor

Guardian Income Protection Additional Benefits

Guardian’s policy not only protects your monthly income, it also provides a range of free additional benefits.

Guardian Anytime

Most of the extra benefits come under Guardian Anytime. For example:

• Unlimited 24/7 Remote GP Service
  Guardian’s remote GP service offers unlimited phone or video appointments. There’s no fixed appointment length, either, so you don’t need to rush through your concerns
• Second Medical Opinion Service
  If you’re diagnosed with a serious illness, you can gain a second opinion from a relevant consultant. This allows you to discuss the diagnosis and treatment options, which may work better for you
• Dedicated Nurse Support
  When suffering from a serious condition, a dedicated nurse can help you understand test results and treatment procedures, to name a few.

Guardian HALO

Guardian HALO is Guardian’s expert claims management service. It offers help and advice in a variety of areas relating to a claim, for example:

• A face-to-face second medical opinion
• Return-to-work support
• Finding a solicitor to handle probate
• Bereavement counselling
• Nursing support following diagnosis and treatment
• Estate planning following a terminal illness diagnosis
• Counselling to help families cope with serious illness
• Therapies to ease the consequences of treatments
• Help to draw up a power of attorney
• Speech therapy.

With this comprehensive range of services, Guardian offers a range of personal, medical and vocational support.

Free Waiver Of Premium Cover

With Guardian’s Income Protection insurance, free Waiver of Premium is automatically included.

While all insurers offer this as an option, for most it’s an add-on for an extra premium. With Guardian’s Waiver of Premium, they step in to pay your premiums once you’ve been off work for 28 consecutive days.

It will also pay out in the following events:

• If you’ve involuntarily lost your job or been made redundant, providing you were in employment on or after the first anniversary of your policy. In this case, Guardian will waiver premiums for up to 6 months
• After the first anniversary of your policy if you’re on maternity or paternity leave. Guardian will also waive your premiums for up to 6 months in this case
• If you can’t do your job due to illness or injury, Guardian will waive premiums until you’re either well enough to return to work, you reach retirement, or your policy expires.

How Long Will My Premiums Be Waived For?

Guardian will waive your premiums until one of the following events occurs:

• You return to work
• You retire
• Your policy expires
• You pass away.

The waiver of premium cover has no relation to the deferral period you may have chosen. Even if you’ve chosen a 13, 26 or 52 week deferred period, the waiver of premium will still kick in after 28 days.

There’s no limit on the number of times you can use the waiver of premium cover, and it will have no impact on any claim you make.

How Does Guardian Compare?

Return-To-Work Payment

If you have a phased return to work or are only well enough to do your job part-time, your earnings may still be reduced. In these cases, you may be eligible for a Return-to-Work payment.

With this option, Guardian continues to pay you a percentage of the benefit you were receiving before you returned to work. The percentage they continue to pay will be proportional to the amount your earnings have decreased by.

Guardian will continue to pay your Return-to-Work payments until the sooner of the following events:

• You no longer meet the definition of incapacity
• Your new earnings are equal to, or more than, your earnings before your claim
• The payment period ends (i.e., you have opted for a 24 month claim period)
• The policy expires
• You pass away.

Income From Other Sources Deducted

If unable to work due to accident or sickness, you may still receive an income. For example, you might get sick pay or have another insurance policy which is paying out. You might even own your own business, which you can draw an income from, or be receiving an ill-health pension payment.

If this is the case, Guardian will deduct this income when working out your benefit payout. This is because it might take you over your maximum cover amount. The maximum Guardian are able to pay is:

• 65% of any continuing income or profit (including dividends, bonuses and benefits in kind)
• 65% of ill-health early retirement pensions
• 100% of payments from similar insurance policies (as these are paid to you tax free).

It’s important to note that Guardian don’t make any deduction for state benefits or income from your investments. Any payments they do make to you may affect a claim on other income protection policies you or your employer have.

Also, any state benefits you’re entitled to may be reduced due to your Income Protection payouts. For example, payments may reduce your universal credit entitlement.

Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Financial Adviser

Shortest Deferral Period Is 4 Weeks

Guardian’s shortest deferral period option is 4 weeks. There are other insurers that offer deferral periods of 1 week or even 1 day. If you need a shorter deferred period due to a lack of sick pay or savings, another insurer may be a better option.

Split Deferral Periods

Guardian offers a split deferral period, which many other insurers don’t. This means you receive a reduced benefit for an initial period, followed by your full benefit later.

This is a way to allow for earnings you expect to receive after you fall ill, such as sick pay. It’s often suitable for NHS workers such as doctors, surgeons, nurses and midwives.

Good Choice Of Additional And Optional Benefits

The combination of Guardian HALO and Guardian Anytime makes for a decent free additional benefits package. Guardian offers remote GP services, a second medical opinion, and bereavement counselling after the loss of a loved one.

Cover Uplift

Guardian’s Cover Uplift kicks in if your maximum cover amount is within 10% of your actual cover limit, based on your earnings. This means Guardian will apply their Cover Uplift to meet the shortfall. For example, if the maximum amount of cover you’re allowed is £950 a month, and your benefit amount is £1,000 a month, Guardian will pay the £1,000 a month.

No Claims Statistics

After several acquisitions and rebrands, Guardian has only launched its Income Protection since early in 2023. So, it has not yet published detailed claims statistics, such as the percentage of claims paid.

While it’s likely these will come with time, it does make Guardian slightly less transparent on this front than the rest of the providers in the market.

How Much Does Guardian Income Protection Cost?

Income Protection is a very valuable type of insurance. Many people fall ill throughout their working life and consequently worry about mortgage payments and bills on top of their health.

Having the right protection insurance can protect your family and give you much-needed peace of mind if you’re unable to work.

Example

To give you an idea of how much you might expect to pay for Guardian Income Protection, we’ve provided some examples below, based on varying ages.

To calculate these quotes, we’ve assumed that the individual looking for cover wants a monthly benefit of £1,250 and:

• A 4 week deferral period
• Needs index-linked cover
• Long-term payout (to retirement age)
• Is in a low-risk office based role
• Has no pre-existing conditions
• Is a non-smoker.

Of course, this is just an example. The actual cost will depend on your individual circumstances, such as your annual earnings, health status and policy options.

Get Guardian Income Protection Quotes & Expert Advice

Guardian is one of a range of UK providers who offer Income Protection Insurance. When researching the right insurer for you, you should be considering all your options.

If you have any questions, we have a team of experts who are on hand to help, call us on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk. If you are ready to undertake your own research, you can use our quote tool to compare the top UK Income Protection insurers.

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.

• There is no fee for our service
• We are an award winning 🏆 independent insurance broker who works with all the leading UK insurers
• You’ll speak to a dedicated expert from start to finish
• We are very proud of the 3955 and growing independent client reviews rating us at 4.92 / 5
• Claims support when you need it most.
• We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. You can find us on the financial services register here 🧐

For fee-free independent advice on Income Protection, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can reach us on 02084327333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.