Group Life Insurance

Are you a small or medium-sized business looking for ways to provide additional benefits for your employees?

If so, building a comprehensive financial benefits package can do just that. This may include:

• Group life insurance – or “death in service” benefit
• Group income protection
• Group Critical Illness cover

As group life insurance experts, we can help you to tailor the right benefits package to your business. For example, you might want to offer different levels of benefits for different types of employees, such as directors, managers, and staff. 

“Group life insurance, group income protection, and group Critical Illness cover can provide your employees with a valuable and comprehensive benefits package.

“Putting these valuable benefits in place helps you to attract and retain staff, and ensure your employees and their family receive financial support if the worst happens.”

Gwilym Pugh, I’m Insured

5 key reasons you should provide group insurance benefits to your employees

1. To provide financial support to the families of your staff

Your business is likely to feel like a family. So, it may be important to you that make sure that your staff are protected and that their loved ones receive financial support if the worst happens.

2. It can increase staff loyalty

Offering a comprehensive employee benefit package including death in service, group income protection, and group Critical Illness cover can boost staff loyalty. It gives employees a compelling reason to stay with you, and demonstrating you care about them can boost morale.

3. Good benefits can help to attract high quality staff

In a competitive jobs market, an excellent employee benefits package can make your business stand out. Offering group life insurance, income protection, and Critical Illness cover as standard can really help to attract good quality people.

4. It’s often a deductible business expense

Under the UK’s current tax laws, premiums for group life insurance, group income protection, and group Critical Illness cover normally qualify as an allowable business expense. Offering these benefits can consequently be highly tax-efficient.

5. Underwriting is normally simple and straightforward

Underwriting for group insurance is often very straightforward. Insurers will typically cover employees up to a certain level of benefit without needing to see any medical information or asking any difficult questions.

Group life insurance (death in service)

Group life insurance – often called “death in service” benefit – is a valuable and cost-effective employee benefit. It pays a tax-free lump sum or a taxable dependents’ pension to the loved ones of an employee who dies while covered by the policy.

Flexible and tax-efficient, death in service is one of the most important benefits you can offer your team. Your staff benefit from the peace of mind that their loved ones will receive financial support if they die while they are employed by your business. 

Group income protection

As well as making sure the families of your employees benefit from a lump sum if their loved one were to die, there is other financial support you can offer to your team.

Group income protection provides an income to an employee if they are absent from work due to serious illness or injury. 

A key benefit of group income protection is that it also provides rehabilitation support from the early stages of an employee’s absence to help aid their recovery as quickly and effectively as possible.

It’s essentially a win/win – your employee receives financial support and assistance with their recovery, while you can reduce absenteeism and get your valuable staff back to work sooner.

Group income protection benefits typically include:

• You can choose what percentage of income to pay your employees if illness or injury prevents them from working for an extended period. You can normally pay up to around 80% of salary
• You can choose how quickly the income replacement kicks in – for example, after 8, 13, 28, 41 or 52 weeks
• Employees will have access to a team of rehabilitation and medical experts
• You can save on sick pay costs and reduce the time you spend managing absence
• The proactive rehabilitation services mean your employees can focus on their health, recovery and return to work.

Furthermore, many insurers have automatic acceptance limits below which underwriting won't normally be required. 

Group Critical Illness cover

If you want to make sure your employees are financially supported in the event they are diagnosed with a serious medical condition, then group Critical Illness cover could be the ideal choice.

Group Critical Illness cover provides employees with a tax-free lump sum if they are diagnosed with a specified condition covered under the policy. 

This will include more common conditions such as serious cancer and heart attacks, as well as strokes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and a range of other critical conditions.

You can also tailor your group Critical Illness cover so it looks after an employee’s family. Most policies cover children as standard, and many allow your employees to add cover for their spouse or partner. 

This is a really valuable benefit as it relieves money worries quickly and helps your employees to feel confident about their financial future. They can use the payout to replace income, adapt their home, adjust to a new way of life or to pay for childcare. 

Get in touch with the group insurance experts

With many years’ experience helping businesses across the UK to arrange group insurance, we can help you get the right cover at the right price.

Speak to us if you need:

• Death in service benefit (group life insurance)
• Group income protection
• Group Critical Illness cover

Get in touch to find out how we can help you. Call our experts on 0800 334 5980 or complete the contact form on our website.