Anyone who has a loan or who has taken out credit card will probably be offered the chance of protecting them with loan payment protection. A policy is taken out to ensure that if you could not work due to such as illness or accident or if you became unemployed you would have an income to carry on paying your outgoings. While taking the protection out is a great idea, you can get a policy a whole lot cheaper if you choose to shop around for it.
There are specialists who only deal in loan payment protection and other related protection policies. They offer the lowest premiums while at the same time ensuring that all the information is given regarding the policy. You do have to check the conditions before buying as this where you can find out when the policy would begin and end. All policies have different dates, some providers will begin to payout after you have only been out of work or have been unemployed for 30 days. Some will backdate their cover to the first day of incapacity or unemployment but others do not. All policies only pay for up to a certain amount of time. Providers could offer 12 months protection and other may offer 24 months, the policy would then expire.
Guarding your repayments should be considered essential if you do not want to fall behind and into debt. Anyone who gets into debt will have their credit rating affected and will then find it very hard to get any form of credit in the future. Even worse your lender might seek repossession of your belongings to pay off the debt. With loan payment protection behind you there would be no worry of where you would find the money each month. You would get the tax-free income that you insured against when taking out the cover. This would allow you to concentrate on making a full recovery and being able to get back to work. In the case of unemployment it would allow you time to find the type of work suitable for you.
Loan payment protection products caused quite a stir in 2005 after the Citizens Advice made a super complaint to the Office of Fair Trading and it emerged that there had been mis-selling. The Office of Fair Trading handed out fines to many names on the high street as a result during an investigation. However it is essential to remember that it is not the fault of the products that were to blame for the many problems noted. In the majority of cases it was the lack of information from high street lenders at the time of pushing protection that caused problems. If you stick with independent providers you will get excellent advice free of charge before you buy. With the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Services Authority both investigating the payment protection sector a lot of changes for the better have been seen. Currently the Competition Commission is conducting an in-depth enquiry into the sector, the results of which will be revealed to the public in February 2009.
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