Income Protection for Businesses
A structured income protection plan provides employees with a regular monthly income if they are unable to work due to illness or injury, helping to cover essential living costs while reducing financial pressure during recovery.
Why Income Protection Matters
How long could you afford to support an employee on sick leave?
State disability support only provides a modest disability income. In some cases, employees might receive temporary additional support, but qualifying is increasingly difficult.
By comparison, a typical insured income protection benefit could fund at least 50% of an employee’s salary for up to five years. Keeping them on the payroll during recovery also maintains other employee benefits, such as Group Life and Private Medical Insurance, while you protect your investment in their training, skills, and experience.
From day one of absence, you’ll also gain access to your insurer’s medical and rehabilitation support, helping employees recover and return to work sooner.
How a Group Income Protection Plan Works
This ensures employees can continue to meet living costs without relying solely on state benefits or personal savings.
Deferred Periods and Integration with Employer Sick Pay
A key feature of any income protection policy is the deferred period – the length of time an employee must be absent before benefits are paid.
Deferred periods are usually aligned with:
By structuring this correctly, employers can manage costs while ensuring a seamless transition from sick pay to insured benefits.
There may also be interaction with State Benefits, depending on the employee’s eligibility and the scheme design. Most IP policies pay the full percentage of insured salary, irrespective of State Benefit entitlements.
Selecting the right deferred period is therefore an important part of balancing affordability with appropriate employee support.
Claims, Rehabilitation and Ongoing Support
A key strength of income protection insurance is your insurer’s support, provided throughout the life of a claim.
Most insurers offer:
So, IP insurance is not just financial protection – it actively supports employee recovery, helping reduce long-term absence and improve return-to-work outcomes.
Tax Treatment and Funding Structures
In most employer-funded income protection arrangements, monthly benefits are taxed as PAYE income, although direct settlement options are sometimes available, depending on the scheme design.
This differs from critical illness and group life insurance, where benefits are typically paid as tax-free lump sums.
Group Protection offers USPs that Employees can’t Access Individually
The strongest of these are:
Designing the Right Plan
There’s no one-size-fits-all policy. We can help you to build or modernise a scheme that’s fair, cost-effective, and aligned with your organisation.
We’ll help you consider:
Modernising Existing Contracts
If you haven’t reviewed your existing policy for some time, it may no longer offer the best value.
We’ll help you:
Whether you’re improving an old plan or introducing income protection for the first time, Fulcrum can deliver a modern, business-friendly solution.
Why Income Protection Is a Strategic Employer Decision
Providing income protection is more than a financial safeguard – it is a strategic decision that supports workforce stability.
Protecting an employee’s monthly income helps reduce financial stress, supports wellbeing, and enables employees to focus on recovery.
For employers, it reduces the cost and disruption associated with long-term absence, while strengthening recruitment and retention through a meaningful employee benefit.
Ultimately, a well-designed income protection plan demonstrates a clear duty of care and reinforces your commitment to supporting employees when it matters most.
Did you know?
Some policies now include Employee Assistance Programmes, virtual GP appointments, and second medical opinions – available to your whole workforce, even if only senior roles are insured.
We can also secure high levels of guaranteed cover without requiring employees to disclose health information.
What Our Clients Say
Partnerships built on trust, results, and understanding - here's what our clients have to say.
“By identifying and recognising our specific requirements and priorities, Fulcrum has helped us to tailor our company benefits around a relatively strong local National Health Service. This has resulted in significantly reduced insurance costs without reducing the speed or quality of care. We have always found their honest and pragmatic approach to be a good fit with our own business.”
“With our previous provider, I always felt like ‘just a number’ calling them with any queries – whereas an expert outfit like Fulcrum offers personalised service. After meeting them, we discovered there is much to insurance plan design which can impact massively on premiums”.
“Your team are a credit to Fulcrum. Michelle has been excellent with progress and updates to the schemes we’ve implemented.”
“Fulcrum has helped us to protect more employees, through better plan design.”
“Fulcrum thinks in a much more creative and strategic way than the average broker, and as a result provides a much higher value of service. We have saved approximately £50k in direct costs and far more in management time, as administration is far simpler.”
“Good engineers are thin on the ground and it’s important to us to attract and retain some of the best in the industry. Feedback tells us our employees value the benefits aspect of their package, and we are keen go the extra mile with this. We have found Fulcrum’s service to be second to none, extremely knowledgeable and professional.”
“Our experience with the team at Fulcrum has been nothing short of fantastic. They are friendly, approachable and very quick to respond to any queries. They spend time to explain situations and processes, to ensure that we understand them fully which demonstrates their dedication to great customer service”.
“Fulcrum’s advice and hands on approach has enabled us to provide a competitive and comprehensive Benefits package for our Employees.”
“I was initially sceptical that Fulcrum would be able to help us with our staff benefits packages as I felt we already had good value from providers. However, their careful and methodical analysis, combined with some innovative thinking, ended up with a great result with considerable savings for us. What’s more, the savings kicked in immediately. We continue to be delighted with their service.”
“Through diligent assessment of the market and tough negotiations on our behalf Fulcrum has saved us many thousands of pounds on our staff benefits. As well as major cost savings, the team at Fulcrum are exceptional in their professionalism and customer service”.
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