Edinburgh · Scotland · UK-wide
A mortgage is usually the largest commitment a household ever takes on, and protection is what keeps it in the family if something goes wrong. There are four core products: life cover pays out on death, critical illness cover pays a lump sum on diagnosis of a specified serious condition, income protection replaces a proportion of your income if illness or injury stops you working, and family income benefit pays a monthly income to your dependants rather than a lump sum. Prime Mortgages arranges all four across the whole of market, and the advice costs you nothing.
Common questions
No. It is not a legal or regulatory requirement for a residential mortgage in the UK, and no lender can make a mortgage conditional on buying insurance through them. Buildings insurance is required. Most people take life cover because losing an income and keeping a mortgage is a difficult combination, not because they must.
Life insurance pays out when you die. Critical illness cover pays a lump sum while you are alive, on diagnosis of a condition specified in the policy — commonly cancer, heart attack and stroke, though good policies cover far more. They are often bought together, and critical illness typically costs several times more than life cover for the same sum.
For most people, income protection. You are statistically more likely to be off work long-term through illness or injury than to be diagnosed with a listed critical illness, and income protection pays out on any incapacity rather than only on a defined list of conditions. Critical illness is a valuable addition once income protection is in place.
It places the policy outside your estate, so the payout goes directly to the beneficiaries you name rather than waiting for confirmation or probate. It is free to do at the point of application, usually keeps the payout free of inheritance tax, and can cut the time to payment from months to weeks. We set trusts up as standard.
It depends on your age, health, whether you smoke, the amount of cover and the term. A healthy non-smoker in their thirties can often cover a typical mortgage for a modest monthly premium; smoking and existing conditions raise it significantly. We quote across the whole market rather than one insurer, and there is no fee for our protection advice.
Possibly not. Non-disclosure is the single most common reason claims fail. Insurers will price for almost any disclosed condition — a policy that costs more but pays is worth far more than a cheap one that does not. Always answer the medical questions in full.
A twenty-minute conversation will tell you what you can realistically borrow, what it will cost and whether it is worth doing. It is free, and we will tell you honestly if the answer is no.