Covering the repayments of loan or credit card outgoings each month is a great idea and if loan protection is taken out with a standalone payment protection provider it does not have to cost a lot. You are able to pay a premium each month based on how old you are when you apply and the amount you want to insure each month. As age is taken into account, the younger you are the more savings you will make on the cost of protecting your repayments.
Loan payment protection would provide you with the income needed to be able to continue meeting any payments of loan/credit cards that you had each month. This would mean that you are not at risk of falling behind into debt and having to suffer the consequences of loan arrears. There could be many consequences based on the amount you have borrowed and the type of loan. Almost certainly your credit rating would be affected and this makes getting credit of any kind very hard in the future. You could have to take out a bad credit loan or pay a high rate of interest. If you had taken out a secured loan and out your home up against the loan then you are at risk of having it repossessed by the lender.
You can take on loan protection at the same time as taking out the borrowing. Usually in the majority of cases this would be the more expensive way of protecting your loan. High street lenders usually charge way over the odds for cover because they bring in around £4 billion in profits each year to make up for the cheap loans with low rates of interest that they give. Some have been known to add in the cover alongside the borrowing for the term of the loan and they calculate the interest on top of it. In some cases this has been known to push up the cost of the loan by as much as half again.
Loan protection taken out with a standalone provider will begin to provide you with an income after at least 30 days of being unable to work or of being unemployed. Some providers might extend this right up to 90 days and some will offer to backdate the payment to the first date of unemployment or incapacity. All policies will only provide you with an income for a certain length of time. Usually you are able to take cover that will pay 12 monthly payments or 24 monthly payments before it ceases. During this time you would be able to relax and concentrate on looking around for work if you were unemployed. In the case of suffering an illness or an accident you would be able to concentrate on making a full recovery.
Providing you check the terms of a loan protection policy before taking it out you can be assured of getting a plan that you would be able to fall back on if and when you needed it as long as you paid the premium each month for the cover.
Simon Burgess is Managing Director of the award-winning British Insurance, a specialist provider of loan protection. |
No comments:
Post a Comment