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Mentioned tonight on the chat, so I thought I'd put what I learned from a financial advisor on here in case people are thinking of taking a scheme out. I'm not a qualified expert here, just my personal feelings based on the conversation I had.

We all want insurance to cover us if we can't work. The problem is, insurers don't want to pay out; so they have exclusions and costs to make it difficult.

The first thing to consider is that policies only pay you based on proven income. From that they exclude any other money you have coming in, such as insurance payouts if it was a motor accident, and ANY benefits you are entitled to. So, whatever you pay for, you will only ever get what you can prove you earned last year, less the state benefits, in the best case.

The second problem is the premiums. There will be a lot of exclusions as standard, and they WILL try to avoid paying out where possible. Fall off a ladder? Can you prove you had all the possible safety equipment in place at the time, or prove you did a written risk assessment that day?

The other major consideration is the deferred-payment time you put on the policy. If you want the payout to start the day you break your back, then be prepared to pay a huge premium. If you defer it for, say, three months, then the premiums fall dramatically. But, the chances are that you'll be re-thinking your career if you have three months off work as a self-employed gardener!

My other half is a financial advisor, although she doesn't cover personal injury policies (if you want a mortgage then please do get in touch). Going through the figures I was surprised how much I would get in benefits, and this would be taken off the payout. For me, deferring the payout more than, say, three weeks would mean I'd gone bust, but the costs for a policy that pays out immediately were almost what I earn.

I'm sure that the companies who offer this cover are very convincing. I think there could well be mis-selling going on, though, so I'd really encourage you to take professional advice before signing up to any of them. I'm sure some of what I've put here might be wrong for some policies, but there are real risks that you might be paying too much for a policy that won't actually be of much use if you need it.