Income Protection

Legal & General has revealed it paid £31.3m in group income protection (GIP) claims last year with 60% of people returning to work in less than six months.

Nearly a quarter of employees feel a major impact when colleagues are absent, Aviva UK Health research has shown.

Employers should make changes to their group income protection policies following the abolition of the default retirement age and increases in state pension ages, Legal & General is to warn.

Unum is challenging six UK bloggers to live on Employment Support Allowance (ESA) for one week to highlight the importance of workers protecting their income.

The National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) will not provide a gateway to the selling of protection products, according to think tank Reform.

A third (33%) of UK households could not cope financially if they lost their main income yet only 7% of the population has income protection (IP), according to research.

Early intervention on employee absence can markedly increased return to work rates, according to Legal & General.

As stress takes its toll, 33% of public sector employers said their average employee takes more than five days off sick per year, compared to 15.9% in the private sector.

The fit note is not reducing absence yet as sickness time off increased to 190 million lost working days at a cost of £17bn to employers last year, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has said.

The government has vowed to press ahead with reform of the welfare state as its latest statistics show less than a quarter of those applying for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) are successful.