Income Protection Insurance (IPI) is an insurance policy, available principally in Australia,

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, New Zealand,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, and the United Kingdom, paying benefits to policyholders who are incapacitated and hence unable to work due to

illness A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that ar ...

accident An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researcher ...

. IPI policies were formerly called ''Permanent Health Insurance'' (PHI). The same concept is instantiated in the United States as disability income insurance (

disability insurance Disability Insurance, often called DI or disability income insurance, or income protection, is a form of insurance that insures the beneficiary's earned income against the risk that a disability creates a barrier for completion of core work func ...

). A study by British insurer

Legal & General Legal & General Group plc, commonly known as Legal & General, is a British multinational financial services and asset management company headquartered in London, England. Its products and services include investment management, lifetime mortg ...

, entitled Deadline to the Breadline Report 2014, found that only 8% of UK households have income protection insurance. Further work to bring the topic into the public domain appears in the 7 Families project.

References

{{Insurance Personal finance Types of insurance Income