Unemployment cover can give you an income and peace of mind when bought correctly but you do have to shop around for the cover and be aware that there are reasons which could stop you from making a claim. The cover is taken out in case you should find yourself unemployed by such as redundancy and without the money to continue meeting your essential outgoings, mortgage repayments or loan repayments.

Unemployment cover can be taken out as loan payment protection, mortgage protection or income protection and all policies have exclusions in them that could prevent you from making a claim. Exclusions which are common to all policies include being retired, self-employed, suffering a pre-existing medical condition or only being in part time work. While these are just the common ones there can be others and this is one of the reasons why you have to read the small print of a policy before you buy the cover.

Mortgage protection can give you an income if you should become unemployed with which to carry on paying your mortgage each month. The State gives very little help even if you are entitled to receive any and this means that your home could be at risk of repossession. Loan payment protection will cover your monthly loan repayments each month so that you do not get into debt and income protection will give you an income to replace up to a certain amount of your own. All policies can be taken out to just cover unemployment or you can choose to add on sickness and accident cover.

Providing you have ensured that a policy would be in your best interests it would begin payment once you had been continually off work for anywhere between 31 and 90 days. Cover would then continue providing you with a tax free monthly income for between 12 and 24 months depending on the provider, so do check out the small print very carefully.

While cover is usually pushed alongside a mortgage, loan or credit card this is the dearest way to take it and a far better option is going with an independent specialist provider. A specialist will always offer the cheapest premiums and along with this will ensure that you have access to the key facts needed to determine if a policy is suitable. A lack of information regarding payment protection products including unemployment cover is what has led to the cover getting a bad name, which stemmed from the 2005 investigation by the Financial Services Authority.

March 2008 will see the introduction of tables which will allow the individual to compare unemployment cover and see which is the most suitable for their needs. It should make the cover more transparent by revealing the exclusions and will tell the consumer how much the cover will cost in total. Unemployment cover is confusing and many have been coerced into taking out a policy that they could not hope to claim against but providing you stick with an independent provider and read the small print it can work.