Buying Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance in the UK

There are two ways you can buy mortgage payment protection insurance in the UK. One is if you have the insurance added in with the loan when taking it out and the other is by buying it independently from a standalone provider. Protecting your mortgage by adding in cover can work out extremely expensive due to the huge profits that high street lenders make by adding in protection alongside cheap rates of interest on loans.

The cheapest way to take out a policy is to choose to take your protection independently from a specialist in payment protection. They offer not only the cheapest premiums for protection, which in some cases can save you as much as 40%, but also plenty of valuable information regarding the policy. Once you have checked for eligibility with the provider?s website you are then able to fall back on your cover. All ethical providers will ensure that they give all the information needed for the consumer to check the suitability.

If you wish to guard against becoming unemployed only then you are to take out a policy just for this. Should you wish just to cover accident and sickness only then you can or you can protect against accident, sickness and unemployment together. This along with your age and how much cover you need goes towards how much you will pay for the premium. Age based payment protection is a huge bonus for young first time home buyers who very often find themselves having stretched their budget to the maximum. Low cost premiums mean that everyone can not afford to take out what is valuable protection to help them keep the roof over their head.

You only have to stop and consider for a moment how you would manage if you did lose your job or could not work for many months. You have to ask yourself where you would get the large sum needed to pay your mortgage while you recovered or found work again. If applying to the State is your answer then this could be a bit of a let down as State benefit would only pay towards the interest part of the mortgage and then only up to a certain amount each month. You would also have to meet many criteria set out by them and this could be a let down, especially if you have savings over a certain amount or a partner living with you who is working full time.

Mortgage payment protection insurance in the UK has to be checked against a few exclusions for you to be sure that you would be eligible and once you have, you could claim on your policy after the time stated in the conditions of the cover. Providers will usually ask for a deferment period of between 30 and 90 days and some will backdate the benefit to the first day of unemployment or of incapacity. Your policy would then protect you for between 12 and 24 months and then it would cease paying. Usually this would provide you with enough cover to have made a recovery and get back to work or it would give you time to search around and find suitable work again.

Simon Burgess is Managing Director of the award-winning British Insurance, a specialist provider of mortgage payment protection insurance UK.