As Scotland holds its breath amid the uncertainty of next week's vote, families are being urged to guard against the uncertainties they can insure against, particularly a loss of income due to accident or illness.
A new initiative is to be launched this month heralding a year-long campaign to raise awareness about the financial vulnerability families suffer if the breadwinner is affected by a long-term illness.
Most people think it will never happen to them but insurers argue it is not a risk worth taking. "We want to get the message across that you are just a serious accident, bad infection or tragic health incident away from financial meltdown," says Peter Le Beau of the Income Protection Task Force behind the campaign.
The project will provide support for seven families around the UK where the main breadwinner has been forced out of work by an accident or illness and not had any insurance payout. It is hoped that one of the families will be from Scotland. They will each be provided with a tax-free income for a year as if they had originally bought a short-term income protection plan, paid for by a group of insurers which are supporting the campaign. The families have been found with the help of the charity Disability Rights UK.
Le Beau admits: "There is such a negative perception of insurance. We are really not going to emphasise insurance. We want to establish a need first and then talk about solutions."
The main solution is income protection insurance, which is not the same as PPI (payment protection insurance), a type of policy that was so badly missold a few years ago. Peter Hamilton, head of retail propositions at Zurich UK Life, says consumers are mistaken if they think insurers do not want to pay out on these policies. "With income protection we actually look for reasons to pay. We know how much people need financial support if they have health problems."
He says that in the first half of this year every single new income protection claim received by his company was successful. In 2013, Zurich paid out £12.3 million in such claims.
With the seven families project, money will be given on a charitable basis, but paid monthly to replicate what would have happened if the families had insurance in place originally. Another valuable benefit is that each family will also have the opportunity to receive rehabilitation and counselling services to help them back into work as they would also receive under this type of policy.
Hamilton points out that many insurers despair at the fact that people who pay to insure their mobile phones or pets do not insure their incomes.
SunLife says its research indicates that complexity could be putting millions off. It found that, when asked, people valued easy-to-understand products most of all - rating simplicity (39%) more important than price (27%) or even a product's performance (28%).
LV= reached a similar conclusion and introduced its sick pay insurance last year. For a premium of £20, this will pay out £1000 a month for 12 months if people are off sick for more than a month.
That a growing number of families have inadequate life insurance was highlighted recently by Sainsbury's Bank Life Insurance whose research found that 64% of people who have moved up the property ladder in the past five years, and have a bigger mortgage, did not review their life insurance. It also found that 44% of homeowners who have a mortgage do not have any life insurance at all.
Zurich UK Life has also called on the Government to introduce a temporary tax rebate to stimulate the take up of income protection insurance which it argues would save the state millions.
Zurich points out that one million employees spend more than four weeks off work due to illness each year, according to the Department for Work and Pensions, which calculates it costs the UK economy £15 billion a year.
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