Fact-checked and reviewed by Kiruba Shankar Eswaran or another licensed agent on our team. Read our editorial standards.
This guide is for general educational purposes and is not financial advice. Cover, eligibility and terms vary by insurer and by policy. Always read the policy documents for the full terms, limitations and exclusions before you buy.
Landlords are benefitting from a growing private rental market. According to a report the number of households occupied by private renters has more than doubled since 2000 to 4.6 million. According to the Office for National Statistics, the average private rent in the UK increased by 8.7% in 2023-2024. In the same period, house prices rose by just 1.1%.
Landlords have some pretty powerful ways to protect their income in the form of rent guarantee insurance as well as legal measures like Section 8 and Section 21 eviction notices. If tenants run into financial difficulties and can’t keep up with the rent, they don’t have much to protect them.
Even getting a tenancy in the first place can involve jumping through hoops and clearing hurdles like credit checks and references.
So how can tenants redress the balance and make it easier to find and keep their homes?
Income protection (IP) is a type of insurance that can act as a safety net. If you’re committing yourself to a tenancy – which means always being able to pay the rent – income protection can take a lot of the worries out of the experience. With the number of people on long-term sick leave now pushing above 2.8 million, the most frequent cause of financial hardship for working people is illness or injury, which is 10 times more likely than redundancy. When you’re too sick to work, you can quickly find yourself without the income you take for granted. IP can help in two important ways.
Firstly, IP can help you to land a tenancy. Landlords can be very strict about who they’ll rent to – even those with only a single property are banking on it to provide a regular income. That’s why anything that reassures them they’ll get paid every month will make you a more acceptable tenant. For first-time renters this could give you a major advantage over the competition.
It’s also helpful if you’re moving to a new property because your new landlord will ask to see a reference from your current landlord. With every rental property that comes onto the market receiving an average of 25 enquiries, a good reference from a contented landlord is a real plus.
Secondly, what happens if you can’t pay the rent? If you don’t have a generous employee sick pay scheme - or you’re self-employed - and you have to take sick leave for more than a few days, income protection insurance can step in and help you pay your rent. An Eleos income protection policy can pay you for up to 2 years while you recover, taking the financial worry out of being a private tenant.
Then you might want the security of income protection
If you get behind with your rent and you don’t have a sympathetic landlord, there’s not much you can do. They, on the other hand, have quite a lot of power. Not only can they evict you for non-payment, it could be in their financial interests to do so. If they have rent guarantee insurance to cover tenant rent arrears then, in order to make a claim, they have to show their insurer that they’ve served a Section 8 or Section 21 eviction notice. Not only can they then recover most of the unpaid rent from their insurer, their insurance might even give them extra money while they’re trying to find a new tenant.
Eleos income protection policies start at just £5. You can choose how much cover you want, what it will cost and how long you want to be paid for if you’re off sick. Not only can it help you to pay the rent if the worst happens, it can give you the edge when it comes to finding a rental property in the first place. For a no-obligation quote, click here.
Most applicants are not automatically asked for medical evidence. Under age 30, all five UK insurers reviewed for this guide will consider up to £1 million of life cover with no automatic medical evidence based on age and cover amount alone. The amount falls as you get older, and by 75 it can be as low as £25,000 at one insurer and £100,000 at another.
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If you like the sound of Eleos income protection insurance, here’s how to go about getting your policy
Most of us protect our valuable or precious assets, so doesn't it make sense to protect one of the most important: our income?
If you’ve decided that income protection insurance is the right choice for you, it’s time to look at the cover that’s available.
