What is Income Protection?
Income Protection is a type of life insurance policy that pays you money each month if you are unable to work due to illness or injury. This payment continues until you are fit enough to return to work again.
You might get sick pay from your employer or have some savings in the bank to fall back on – but will this be enough? Outlays such as your mortgage, bills and the weekly food shop might mean you still need to supplement sick pay or savings.
What does it cover?
You could use the money to pay your bills, or cover expenses you might build up around medical treatment. You could also use it to keep doing the things that make you happy.
However you decide to use your money, it’s there to support you and your family so you can focus on getting better.
How does it work?
While you’re healthy, you pay a premium every month, or each year if you prefer.
If you are unfortunate to fall ill or become injured and are unable to work during the term of your plan, you can then make a claim and receive a monthly income until you’re fit to return to work or you reach the end of the plan.
While you’re getting your monthly income, you don’t pay any premiums to us. When your illness ends and you return to work, you start paying premiums again.
Benefits of Income Protection with Zurich
Rehabilitation nurses
We have access to a team of rehabilitation nurses who specialise in early intervention services. They can meet you in your home and help put a plan in place to get you back to work.
Treatment costs
We can fund the costs of treatment with a local physiotherapist, psychologist or counsellor which we can arrange in conjunction with your own GP.
Specialist costs
We may be able to pay for you to attend a specialist doctor if it will help you avoid a long waiting list and will assist you in getting better faster.
Proportionate payment
If you return to work on a reduced salary, whether in your current occupation or an alternative occupation, you may be eligible for a proportionate benefit payment.
Cover increases
You can increase your cover if something big happens, so if you get a pay rise or a bigger mortgage, you can increase your level of protection too (subject to certain limits).
Unlimited claims
There is no limit to how many times you can make a claim.
Income Protection insurance with Zurich
Existing customers?
How does the application process work?
Provide some information such as your employment status, your occupation and annual salary.
Get a quote from Zurich.
Contact a financial advisor and complete our proposal form.
Choose an Income Protection plan
.jpg)
Personal Income Protection
This is suitable if you are self-employed or if you are in a job that doesn’t provide an income protection plan for you.
You will pay the premiums, but you can get tax relief at your marginal rate on the premiums you pay.
Claiming tax relief is really important as it reduces the cost to you by the rate you pay tax at - so either 20% or 40%. For example, if you are a higher rate tax payer, a monthly premium of €50 would effectively only cost you €30 because of tax relief at 40%.
If you need to claim, we will pay your income protection benefit directly to you, after tax, USC and any other relevant deductions.
Executive Income Protection
This is designed for employers who want to provide an income protection plan for employees.
The premiums are paid for by the employer and qualify as business expenses that can be offset against corporation tax. The employer can also elect to have pension contributions covered under this plan.
If you need to claim, we will pay the income benefit to your employer, who passes it onto you as the employee through salary, making any relevant deductions such as tax and USC.
To ensure that employer pension contributions are maintained while an employee is off sick, you can cover up to 100% of the employer pension contribution with Executive Income Protection. You can cover up to 35% of the employee’s salary to a maximum of €50,000.
Apply for mortgage protection insurance
Arrange for us to contact you or call 0818 804 164
Not sure where to start?
Frequently asked questions
A lot can happen between the day you take out income protection and the day you need to make a claim. You might get married, have a child, or get a promotion. That’s why you can increase the amount of monthly income you’re covered for when certain big events happen. And you won’t have to answer any questions about your health in the process. You can use this when you:
- Become a parent through a birth or adoption
- Get married or enter a civil partnership
- Buy a home or increase your existing mortgage
- Get a pay rise of 10% or more
Each time one of these things happens you can boost your cover by the lower of €20,000 a year (this is around €1,667 a month) or 50% of your existing level of cover. As a special one off, you can also increase your cover by a maximum of €20,000 a year provided your salary has increased by 20% since your first started your plan. Over the course of your plan the maximum you can increase your total cover by is the amount of cover you initially took out.
With all the above options, the most you can increase your cover to is 75% of your salary. We’ll work out a new premium based on how much you want to increase your cover. You can decrease your cover at any time you like, and you won’t have to answer any questions about your health to do that either.
With Personal Income Protection you can get tax relief at your marginal rate on the premiums you pay. If you need to claim, we will pay your income protection benefit directly to you, after tax, USC and any other relevant deductions.
With Executive Income Protection the premiums are paid for by the employer and qualify as business expenses that can be offset against corporation tax.. If you need to claim, we will pay the income benefit to your employer, who passes it onto you as the employee through salary, making any relevant deductions such as tax and USC.
Yes you can get income protection cover for a pre-existing condition. Depending on the condition you have you may need to pay more for your premium or have an exclusion added to the policy.
You can have as many policies as you like but the total cover cannot exceed 75% of your income.
When you first call to make a claim, we’ll want to find out how you are. We’ll send you a Claim Form to ask you about what’s happened and how we can help you – not just with paying out your claim, but with everything else, like rehabilitation, too.
- We may also arrange to have a nurse contact you by telephone to discuss the circumstances of your claim and identify how we can help with your recovery.
- You might prefer to speak to someone in person, so just ask and we’ll send a nurse out to visit at a time that suits you. Or we can do things via email and post if that’s easier.
- The next stage will be to obtain medical reports from your treating doctors, and we may ask you to attend a medical examination to assess your claim and to see what rehabilitation services we can offer to you.
Even when we’re paying you your monthly income, your claims specialist will still be on hand. You can talk to them about anything that’s on your mind. They’ll be there for you all the way, to support you and to help you get better, until you’re confident you don’t need them any longer.
Not everyone needs their income to start as soon as they’re out of work. If your employer pays you sick pay, you might only want your money to kick in after that. The time in between when you stop working and when we start paying you is called your deferred period. You can choose how long this is: 1, 2, 3, 6 or 12 months (4, 8, 13, 26 or 52 weeks). The longer you wait, the lower your premiums will be.
Learn more about Income Protection
1Zurich Life is owned by Zurich Insurance Company Limited, which has an internationally recognised financial strength rating of AA/stable† by Standard & Poor's, January 2025.