Income protection or Critical illness

[Jollygoodride]

Broker is recommending that we take out the various insurances available i.e.
Family income benefit (FIB), life insurance, income protection and critical illness.

We have decided to go for 2 single life insurance (level term) , FIB £1k/month and income protection.

However, I'm not so sure anymore and feel I should swap FIB for critical illness. Is that reasonable?
Would income protection and critical illness pay out at the same time?

What would you advise please?

Mumsnet, feel free to move to the appropriate section. Apologies, couldn't find where it should go

I dont have any advice but would love to hear some insights on this too!

Income protection works for "short term" stuff like a broken limb or long illness you recover from. Critical illness is a one time pay out once you reach tougher criteria that are likely to be "permanent". We did income protection for DH because his job carries some risk of physical injury and it was useful when he had lymphoma. Plus point is that the income protection premium only goes up due to age and he's still covered if he needs it for anything else beyond his paid sick period in the future.

Critical illness would have paid out (probably, there's some limits on staging and type of cancer) but that's your lot.

Bear in mind that the broker could be earning commission on the sale of policies, and that their advice may be less than impartial.

I'm very cynical about income protection insurance. I only know one person who's successfully claimed on theirs, and they had to go to the financial ombudsman to get paid out. Everyone else I know who's had it has fallen foul of some technicality or other when they've needed to claim. One friend found that the amount of her cover would be reduced by the amount of any redundancy or severance payment, and she got a paltry amount after paying premiums for years, because she got a generous redundancy package.

And if the income protection insurance covered you if you had to stop work due to illness, I don't see why you'd need critical illness as well. If it's just cover for if you lose your job, then maybe you do.