Fracture Cover

A broken bone may seem relatively minor in the grand schemes of things, particularly when discussing long-term illness or major medical conditions as part of an Income Protection or Critical Illness investigation.

However, the financial consequences of suffering a fracture could be serious for many clients, especially if they’re forced to take time off work to recover.

Most Providers offer fracture cover on their income protection products although some allow it to be included on the majority of their personal protection plans, including life, critical illness and income protection.

In all cases where fracture cover is included, either free or at a cost, it’s provided in addition to the core benefit.

Therefore, there is no requirement that the client must be claiming on the core benefit (e.g. income protection or CI) and claims for fracture cover do not impact the core benefit in any way.

There is no deferment period either with fracture cover.

Some include fracture cover automatically and at no cost, others offer the cover as an optional extra and charge a small additional premium. Where there is a charge, the premiums are typically reviewable and could change.

The amount that insurers pay varies depending on which bone is damaged – typically, the more serious the fracture, the higher the amount the insurer will pay.

What about dislocations, ligament tears & tendon ruptures?

A limited number of Providers cover these.

How many claims are permitted?

Some Providers impose a numerical limit on the number of claims permitted in a 12-month period, others a cap on the total amount that can be claimed overall.

If a client suffered multiple fractures in one incident, those insurers that only pay 1 claim per year would make 1 payment for the highest pay-out fracture.

With the other approach, the client would be paid for each fracture, but up to the overall monetary cap imposed by the insurer.

Are there any exclusions?

As is to be expected with a product like this, there are a number of automatic exclusions applied to the cover, which vary depending on the Provider.

Most will exclude certain extreme sports and activities, where there is an increased likelihood of injury.

However the number of activities excluded is more extensive with some insurers, which you should be mindful of when enquiring about this benefit.

This cover is only available through professional financial advisers and does not appear on comparison websites