Do doctors need Income protection & Life Insurance? EXPLAINED.

Today we are talking about protecting your most valuable asset. When we talk about good prudent financial planning, the first thing we'll always check with clients is what protection do you have in place? Would you build your house on sand or would you put in some really solid foundations? I think the answer is yes, you would always protect your property because you wouldn't want it falling down around you. That's the same with you and your financial circumstances. One of the biggest things that we get told is well insurance isn't worth it, it won't pay out. Not true. The stats are pretty staggering. You think the occasional recreational you know cigarette on a night out doesn't justify declaring it. I'm afraid it does. What we invariably see when we look at a more restricted view of just medics who have income protection, one of the highest claims levels is for burnout, anxiety, depression, that sort of area. When you're laying in the back of a HEMS air ambulance with your hand in the front and you in the back of the ambulance, that made those premiums seem really worthwhile. Today we are talking about protecting your most valuable asset. Not your iPhone, not your car, not your house. We're talking about protecting you. If you've been following our podcast or emails for a while now, you probably know why I'm talking about protection even more these days because of my hand injury. We also just added a new protection page on our website which summarizes everything that you need to know including how much sick pay you get, what kind of benefits you could expect, what type of protection you could think about getting. I'll put the link to that in the show notes. On today's episode we start off by talking about the basic things that you can insure yourself against. We talk about income protection versus critical illness. What's the difference? When would you consider getting one over the other versus life insurance? What should it do? How long should it run for? What do you need and what can help you to decide what you need? Then we get into talking about payout rates and the things that doctors claim for. This was pretty shocking to me, not surprising unfortunately, but pretty shocking what doctor illnesses we get. I think you can probably guess if you are a doctor but that was pretty shocking and we link to the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund there as well. Please check that information out. Then we go a little bit into talking about my own situation, how I think about protection now with the benefit of having unfortunately needed to claim on my protection policy and would I do anything different? If you're watching on YouTube, great option to drop a question in the comments. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss an episode. New podcasts come out every Tuesday. YouTube, we're just playing around with it at the moment so I'm not going to commit to a time scale but most weeks we put something out there. Thanks so much for your support and such an important episode today. Thanks for watching or listening. It's my pleasure to welcome back to today's episode Mike Harms from Medical and General Independent Financial Advisors. Hi Mike. Hi Tommy. So we're talking about something really important today which we talk about a lot but I still see people get it wrong and that is protecting your most valuable asset. Now your most valuable asset, it's not your house, it's not your phone, it's not your car, it's you. You are your most valuable asset and there's lots of confusion about how you can protect that most valuable asset so we're going to demystify all that today and go into what kind of things doctors claim for in your experience, Mike. Is that right? Absolutely, yeah. Where are we kicking off? Shall we talk in general terms about protection and why it's important? Yeah, also like if you've been following the podcast or our emails you might have known that I chopped my index, middle and thumb clean off at the end of April and so protection has come right into my radar so let's maybe talk a bit about that as well because I don't think I've really talked about how I'm still completely fine financially despite not being able to work for some time now. So yeah, we'll do that a bit as well but yeah let's start us off. Great, right. So what is protection? Protection is a sort of catch-all word that is the umbrella term for lots of individual products that will make up protection. So the product is the solution but why we need to protect you is really sort of your objective. What's going on in your world? What is it you want to achieve over your lifetime? So when we talk about good prudent financial planning the first thing we'll always check with clients is what protection do you have in place and the reason we ask that is that, and I know I've said this before and I'm sure it's been mentioned in other podcasts, you know the classic would you build your house on sand or would you put in some really solid foundations and if you knew that in the future you were going to go up a couple of levels would you put in really beefy solid foundations? I think the answer is yes, you would always protect your property because you wouldn't want it falling down around you. So that's the same with you and your financial circumstances. Now what you need in terms of protection and what sort of cover in place that's required will be determined by where you are in your life. So there are a lot of people that think when you're younger don't need cover. Not strictly true and we'll come on to a few reasons why. Then when potentially if you decide to have a family that's when things do really change and we see a lot of people coming to us at that point in time because there's been a massive change in their lives and all of a sudden I think there's an element of vulnerability there thinking crikey we've got this little human we've got to look after and how on earth do we do that and what happens if I die and that's sort of that first moment of probably feeling your own mortality and I know you see people that are in these predicaments day in day out but I guess for your own sanity you have to have a degree of separation and so I just think that there's that it's not until it actually becomes real to you in your life that necessarily it comes to the forefront of your minds. So what are the main areas you need to think about? So when we're giving advice to clients we would talk about very matter of fact we need to protect you if you're alive but can't work or we need to protect you if you die or we more importantly we need to protect your family if you die and then there's something in between there which is you know if you suffer critical illnesses and things like that so there's lots of different products available to you and one of the biggest things that we get told is well insurance isn't worth it it won't pay out. Not true. Over 98 to 99 percent of all claims pay out each year. The stats are pretty staggering there's a 99 percent chance on average that the insurance will pay out and the reason it will pay out or doesn't pay out that one percent the reasons why it doesn't pay out is the fact that you have been loose with the truth when you apply. So the way protection works is that you go through what's underwriting on day one that means the insurer will ask to see your medical records to understand more about your circumstances to see whether they're prepared to give you cover or not and the biggest number one misdemeanor in not providing information is about whether you consume lots of alcohol or whether you smoke and it might just be that you think the occasional recreational you know cigarette on a night out doesn't justify declaring it. I'm afraid it does because they have the ability to obviously look back and actually interestingly they do something called a cotinine test I don't know if you ever come across that but it's where they basically take a swab of saliva and they can tell if you smoked in the last 12 months that's what I'm led to believe anyway but that is part of the process and I've been through that process myself so the point is the reason why it's a 99 percent payout is because you go through this process up front so almost if you've declared everything and they've asked for a GP report or they've looked into your health and your history and you've confirmed that everything you've said is true and honest then in the event of a claim there should be no fear that they won't pay up because the whole point of insurance is it is there to catch you the majority pay in for the minority to claim and to receive income off the back of it so hopefully that kind of clarifies a little bit about you know the background to it but it might be worth this maybe just bringing up some slides looking at some of the history of the various different things is that right yeah so if you're watching on youtube bonus section and if you're listening on the podcast we're going to do our best to describe it I usually describe the colors and Mike describes what the graph actually shows so something for everybody brilliant right okay so this is for those on youtube you can see who the private provider is that I'm using the information from but it's because they give all the statistics annually and this is already available out there on the internet so if you know you are getting cover with a particular provider you can ask about the claims history you can google that and it invariably will come up so you know this is one of the mainstream insurers out there household name and last year you know they paid out 17 and a half thousand claims they paid out over 3.8 billion in the last five years and they roughly pay out about 48 claims a day which is staggering when we look at the claims life cover they've paid out 12 and a half claims on life cover alone and the youngest age someone's claimed is 23 and the oldest is 103 so that's quite disparity but you can see they they cover all sorts of areas but where I think it again becomes quite interesting is the reasons why people claim so if we go down to income protections this is taking into consideration everyone in the UK that has an income protection plan with this particular insurer and what it shows here is the top claim causes for income protection and this income protection comes in when you cannot work in your own occupation normally and your sick pay has run out with the hospital or from your practice and in this scenario it shows that the biggest cause for claims is musculoskeletal issues so I presume that means bad backs issues with your you know hips legs whatever it might be but in general terms the next reason is slightly different for females versus males that 23% of all claims are for cancer within females 52% of claims are musculoskeletal in men and a much lower level in cancer now that's probably to do with I guess the age demographics at what point people take the cover out and various cancers that may be more prevalent in females at certain ages than men but the one thing that is lower than I would anticipate but I think this is where the general population sort is anxiety depression burnout and what we invariably see when we look at a more more restricted view of just medics who have income protection one of the highest claims levels is for burnout anxiety depression that sort of area and that's pretty sad yeah and I think it is extremely sad and I think it's a quite a revelation really when you look at it and understand what is it that most of you are claiming for so income protection what is it let's just talk a bit about that there's lots of different types of income protection but if we were to say what's the gold standard out there the gold standard would be a permanent health insurance contract that's what they called income protection it's permanent health insurance because they underwrite you on day one they cannot change your terms once they've offered them to you and it will remain in force and doesn't matter how many times you claim for the same thing it will continue to pay out for you so it's very different to something like your home and contents insurance where every year you renew it and every year depending on what you've claimed for there may be an increase in the premium or they may exclude something that's not how income protection works and that's why sometimes there's a really good rationale for taking out income protection when you're younger because invariably you should be hopefully fitter you shouldn't have any health issues and the premiums will be far cheaper and then that means you get the fullest level of protection throughout the rest of your career so coming back to that gold standard what is it you'd look for you look for a permanent health insurance contract and you would want something called own occupation and the reason you want own occupation is if you cannot do your job in any capacity you want to know that this plan will pay out for you if you took out something called daily living activities there are some plans out there and they say well if you can't complete three out of five daily living activities then we'll pay out those thresholds are much higher as you can imagine rather than i just cannot work in my occupation so if you're a gp you cannot be a gp it will pay out and that's quite important the next thing is for how long you have that payout for so invariably you would want to take that cover out probably through to your planned retirement age or the state retirement age why so long well tommy if you don't mind me using you as a casing example had the situation for you being a worse outcome as in you weren't able to sort of save your hand and there was no prospect of you going back to being a gp in the future you'd be heavily reliant on your income protection plan would you prefer to know that plan runs through all the way to your state retirement age which means all your bills and costs and kids you know kids clubs and all the things you need to pay for are covered or do you think it would have been better to have gone maybe for a shorter plan because it was cheaper yeah definitely like the longer plan was it penny foolish pound anyway don't squimp on it basically is what we're saying but i think yeah it's it's i've got like a unique perspective on it really now because i had it i have it and i never thought i'd ever use it and now i've used it i don't really have any regrets about the decisions i made with what i've got but we can talk about that in a bit maybe but yeah i think you're right it's just about securing your financial future and your families as well definitely having a family is what prompted me to take it out just to say on that mental health point that you made have a listen to our podcast for the royal medical benevolent fund that we did we're working with that charity which supports doctors with all kinds of problems so check that podcast out because yeah it's a reflection of the nature of the job today that as you say the mental health is disproportionately a reason for claiming in healthcare professionals which yep so if you are struggling check that out but yeah i'm glad that you stressed own occupation as well because that is absolutely mandatory really if you're a doctor should we drill in a bit more on that like yeah absolutely so as i mentioned a moment ago it's about whether you can do your job if you're a surgeon if you cannot operate because you've had a hand injury or you know so say you think well i enjoy mountain biking and you might think well actually do you know what that's not going to cause me any issues but you're a surgeon and then all of a sudden you come off your bike and you damage your arm and that stops you from being a surgeon the income protection will pay out because you have own occupation as a surgeon so that's why it's important you get the definition correct it's not that you can be a medic or a doctor in any other capacity it's about the fact that you cannot be a surgeon so that's probably the clearest example and as you'd appreciate therefore premiums for surgeons tend to be a little bit higher so we talk about class occupation and what sort of category you may or may not go into and that is ultimately down to the type of job role you're in if you're sort of a more mainstream doctor then again it will just be can you complete your role in any capacity now the question will then be but what happens if i can go back and do something but as you can imagine an insurer is always going to want to want you to help you and support you get back to work so the best thing you can do is obviously make sure you've got the right protection but also talk to the insurer because they have a lot of support to help you on your road back if you come back and say well i can't go back and do that job but i can do something else well great but it's on a lower salary for example well the insurance will top you back up to your previous level so that's a pretty important point to raise is that it's a safety net that's there for you it ensures that if you cannot work in any capacity you still have income coming into the home and that will allow you to pay your mortgage pay your bills you know pay for school kids clubs things like that holidays and also payable savings if you've got the right level of cover but more importantly it also ensures that if you cannot go back and do everything that you can still have some support so again tommy i'm going to come back to you if that's okay obviously your hand being cut off is quite a major major situation now were you a surgeon that would probably preclude you from going back and doing some form of surgery just in terms of dexterity and things like that however if you felt that you can go back and be a gp but maybe you could do some training for gps or you could go and do some university lecturing well then the income protection plan would pay out the difference between what you were receiving from that income and what you were earning pre-accident so that's quite important and it's the own occupation bit that is key to all of this yeah apologies for the small interruption one of the reasons that i have income protection insurance just bowed in to announce something really important that was my youngest daughter sorry about that if you're on the pod can we talk a bit about the breakdown like how you see the balance between because you said you got income protection which protects your income you've got critical illness which protects you from a predefined list of critical illnesses and you've got life which basically ensures you against premature death so how do you think about the balance between those and you know how should we think about that so i try to look at it in terms of value for money and what i also think is the more likely outcome that you're going to claim for and income protection is fundamentally in my view the most important form of protection you can have apart from life cover if you have liabilities and other things like that and the reason i say that is it doesn't matter how old you are if you cannot work if you have rent to pay if you have bills to pay how will you pay those bills how will you pay the rent how will you pay the mortgage if you don't have an income now you're fortunate in the nhs that you have really good sick pay but depending on where you are within the nhs will be determined whether you have decent sick pay or not so i come across some gps who will have 52 weeks of guaranteed earnings from the practice some are in line with the nhs hospitals where it's 26 weeks full then it drops to 26 weeks half but actually there's also some gp surgeries out there that will only pay some of their employees or partners three months for income and then zero going forward so it's sort of when we look back at some of the stuff i've done with u1 partnership agreements it shows why it's absolutely imperative that you look at your contract and you also understand what sick pay you're receiving what you then want to do is dovetail any protection that you get income protection to match that sick pay so as soon as your sick pay stops the income protection kicks in now the longer deferred period you have so deferred period is how long it takes before it kicks in the longer deferred period you have the cheaper the insurance will be because the chances of you claiming are reduced so that's good news for an insurer and obviously they'll reduce the premium accordingly now income protection as i said will pay out under all circumstances unless your underwriting when you've gone through your medical exclude something and that can happen they can look at your history and say well because you've claimed for a hip injury we're not going to cover a hip injury in the future on that particular site and that's purely because they know the stats is a heightened risk and they think the chances of recurrence could be quite high equally they might turn around and say well we think there's an increased risk of cardiovascular disease for whatever the reasons might be and they may increase the premium because they perceive you to be a higher risk so one of these things will be discussed with you by your advisor and you get that information as you go through the process but income protection is going to pay out in the vast majority of cases in the event of illness short term or longer term so that's the first thing it allows the family to continue with their lives it allows you to continue to pay your mortgage and it allows you to continue saving for your retirement just because you're ill doesn't mean that you're going to die from it and doesn't mean you want to claim critical illness cover that is as you quite rightly said it's a predetermined number of illnesses that if you unfortunately suffer from one of them it will pay out normally is around 45 to 50 definitions depending on the provider you're with and what they pay out for and what they don't pay out for will vary between those providers but that is if you suffer one of 45 conditions it will pay out a lump sum so when we when i tend to look at protection what we will say is income protection is your priority alongside protecting your liabilities such as your mortgage why do you want to protect the mortgage well if you die do you want your spouse if you have no children or do you want your family if you do have a family to be able to live there without any fear for the house being taken away from them in the event of your death so day one you've passed away the house is paid off that's a comfort i would hope to know that the property and the family are secure you've also then got to think about the income that is no longer then coming into the family and one thing we often see is that sometimes people will say well i'm the main earner in the family and my partner is at home bringing up the children or there's some sort of combination of the two and it's always the thought we should protect the person who is bringing the income in and not necessarily the person at home bringing the family up in reality it's equally important to protect both of you because if the person looking after the then that has an impact on your family finances as well and also you don't know how you're going to react to that situation so if that unfortunate position happens the idea of the protection is the mortgage is paid off the house is rent free you can live there secondly if you then unfortunately are not well off the back of that for understandable reasons then your income protection could kick in and actually start to you know support your income levels that you may need so really it's about protecting the family protecting lost income to the family or to your spouse and then the critical illness is really for me the cherry on the cake so the reason i say that is it can be potentially more expensive than your traditional life cover and income protection setup and when we're looking at sort of the reasons why you might claim i think there are an awful lot more reasons to claim on income protection than there would be on a critical illness policy so it depends on who you speak to as to who they what they think is more important that's my rationale for what it's worth and it really will come down to your own personal views and your own personal circumstances so sometimes we'll get a client come to us and say well look there's a there's been quite a bit of a history in our family of cancer and that's something that worries you and if that's something that worries you and you want to protect it critical illness policy will probably be an appropriate form of cover for you but it's all based on your personal circumstances yeah 100 i think that's a really interesting breakdown of how the balance strikes out and you said that like it depends on your own personal circumstances so so i was like and it is quite expensive because unfortunately quite likely to get one of those things so yeah i got i've got life of course and income protection but no critical illness criticize my logic and by the way it's too late if it is too late because i've already injured my hand so probably uninsurable now from that point of view which goes back to your point that you've got to think about this early before you get something like get it early you do but also accept that if you have had something you can still be covered for 99% of other things and so the theory of oh well i'm not covered for that and that was the thing i wanted to be covered for well i do understand that but you've got to look at from an insurance perspective why would they take on a risk knowing that there could be a higher chance of you claiming it is sort of a and i understand why you might want it but there are certain certain rules around income protection you know certain things if you've not if you've not had that issue for five years or more well that can then be included so there's lots of different iterations to what can be possible and what isn't necessarily possible which is why it's important to have a conversation with a financial advisor about it it's not going to be straightforward and putting it off because you think you won't get cover or because of the reasons that you've had an accident not a reason to not investigate it so for me it's imperative that you do look at it another thing that people probably have never come across is something called family income benefit and this is just another life cover policy that effectively replaces lost income in the event of death this amount of money that comes into the family normally that's for people that do have families and you would cover a set level of income usually up until your youngest child is age 23 so there's lots and lots of things you can do what blend what amount what approach will be determined by a number of things your personal circumstances your budget and your views on the world all of those points are extremely valid budget is going to be a big driver so you have to accept there is an element of cost to protection but it's about how much of your income would you be prepared to give up to protect the majority of your income so you might say well actually i'm prepared to give up two percent of my income to protect 98 of my income it's sort of that sort of thought process there yeah definitely like i'm really frugal and you know paying out the premiums for all those years hurt my frugalness and i kind of try to think about it like when you're building wealth you've got to think about downside protection right so you know the worst case scenario what if things go wrong and what is that downside protection worth to you so how i think about it is that you know i'm the main wage earner in our household so if i was to get ill injure myself or die i could buy a product which would effectively mean that i would never get poorer than that level of cover that i have and actually when you're laying in the back of a hems air ambulance with your hand in the front and you in the back of the ambulance that was that made those premiums seem really worthwhile and i guess what i'm saying is like i'm buying downside protection and i'm never going to get lower than this level of cover which i've chosen my family are going to be protected whatever should happen and it's just like peace of mind and it's expensive peace of mind but i mean i'm now completely biased and completely conflicted because for all those years i made this money i was saying yeah and now i'm just going to be like evangelical about it for obvious reasons but that's just how i think about it just think about it like there's a level that you could if somebody said there's a policy and you could never go below this level of wealth like what is that worth to you uh and i thought i knew what it was worth but it turned out it was worth a lot more than that because yeah when i was laying in the back of the old chopper that was on my mind like and yeah i was but it's also about how you build the wealth tommy because you're talking about protecting that wealth and what you've accrued today it's also about the fact that you might want to continue building wealth so we all talk about well financial freedom i want to retire at x date or whatever it might be your dreams don't have to go or be given up just because of an accident or real health those can still be a reality and i think that's what people need to sort of consider is when you're looking at this is it's not just there as an expense it's there to protect as you quite rightly pointed out and it's about just saying well look i'm happy that there's a premium there you sincerely hope you never claim on it a bit like all insurance you sincerely hope you never claim on it but when you need it you sincerely hope you've got it you know we have had experiences where we've seen the other side of it obviously tommy you've seen it but we've also seen the other side with critical illnesses and things like that we help people through their claims the only gratification we can take from it or the comfort we can take from it is that the correct cover is in place for them and that is one last thing one less thing for the person who is either dying or is in a person in a pretty bad situation they know that they don't have to worry about it the one thing can i just raise that we haven't spoken about here is the nhs pension and ill health retirement pensions and tier one tier two pensions but also death in service lump sums and things like that is it right just to quickly cover off that as well i would love to because it's totally underrated feature of the nhs pension in my opinion absolutely okay right so i'm sure there's copious amounts of this stuff on the medics money website but just to reiterate if you are a member of the nhs pension scheme you receive some fairly good benefits with it if you cannot work in your own occupation you could be eligible for what's called the tier one pension that is effectively the value of your pension to date that has been accrued and you should be able to access that through your intranet or through the total reward statements online i think it's recently changed to a different portal but ultimately you can get an up-to-date statement and what you have on that statement is effectively an indication as to what you would receive in the event you qualified for a tier one ill health pension that means you cannot work in your own occupation you have to go through a series of processes it's not easy to attain so when you're looking at income protection you most likely will not take that into consideration that you would but it's nice to know that it's there if it does pay out the second tier pension is called a tier two pension a tier two pension is that you cannot work in any occupant occupation whatsoever and is probably more aligned traditionally with people who are terminally ill and that means they could give you up to half of your remaining service added into the pension and then you get pensioned or if you are terminal they might even give you a lump sum in lieu of that pension and again that's where you would probably want to talk to an advisor to walk you through that process and get some support on that so i might sound a bit downbeat about it because it's purely in terms of my tone is because it's obviously not a very nice subject to be talking about if you're claiming on a tier one or a tier two pension but they are really solid benefits that you're paying into and getting off the back of it the final things then will be a dependent pension in the event of death and a death in service lump sum so if you're in service and you're in the pension there would be a twice your pensionable earnings on on average as a lump sum paid to you there are variations between schemes but that's a sort of a good middle of the road test and then there would also be a dependent pension a spouse's pension and children's pension and again depending on what scheme you're in will determine as to how much you get but these are all additional benefits but with all these things you need to determine whether you want to take those into consideration when you're looking at your protection needs or whether you want to keep them in isolation and so they become as an added benefit to the family but knowing you've then actually got separate protection the reasons why you might keep them separate is purely down to the fact we don't know where your career is going to go or what you're going to do whether that's going to change because a change in your working practices will have a direct impact on the level of those benefits you may get out yeah i think like often i come across people who are like oh yeah i don't need life insurance because i've got the nhs lump sum so this is just like you need to check your own individual circumstances because you said the death in service payment is two times your pension will pay right so for me two times my pension will pay is nowhere near enough to ensure that my family can live without me forevermore and if that is enough for you you've got a pretty decent nhs salary or massively low outgoings right so you know just yeah if that's what you're relying on just maybe quickly check your maths and make sure it all adds up because i've seen a lot of people's mouths on that and it's like whoa that's just not enough yeah okay that's really helpful are we going to talk about the murky world i want to talk about the murky world of where to get the right policy for the right price because let's just say you're going to compare and contrast doing it yourself okay pros and cons of that using a restricted financial advisor or using an independent specialist medical advisor declaration of interest here me and ed believe so passionately in the benefit of independent specialist medical advisors that we set up medics money we only allow the very best independent specialist medical advisors on medics money so that's my declaration of interest out of the way you're probably going to do your declaration of interest but let's start by looking at like do it diy versus restricted versus independent okay diy perfectly legitimate way of doing it but are you getting the best cover for the money you're paying are you getting the right level of cover as well so if you feel comfortable that you understand protection well enough and you understand your needs then absolutely you can do it yourself it is a misnomer that it's cheaper for you to do it yourself rather than going through an independent advisor it's not the case advisors we have the ability so again declaration i'm independent in my previous life i have been restricted so i have the ability to talk from both circumstances restricted what does that mean it means that the advisor you are speaking to is only going to talk to you about a limited range of products that might be one it might be two so that means you don't have much in the way of comparison as to whether you're getting good value or not i'm not going to say it's a sweeping generalization but in a lot of circumstances we will see that restricted doesn't necessarily mean cheaper for you there are instances so again being balanced but on the whole we tend to find that being independent and having the ability to see what is the cheapest available for you and that's when it comes to things like income protection and life cover you want to look at premium but more important when you come to critical illness cover you want to be able to see the different definitions you want to understand when someone might pay out or might not pay out if you go direct yourself you're only going to potentially look at one provider or two providers trying to make that differential and that that judgment call might be harder for you so the idea of using independent financial advisors again we both said we're biased on this but really think it's important there are no costs associated with taking advice from a financial advisor there is commission paid so you are paying it through the premium over the entire time of your holding that plan but there is no cost associated with actually engaging with an advisor normally there may be exceptions but going to an advisor you are going to receive full financial advice with a recommendation based on your personal circumstances why is that important well if you do it yourself that's buyer beware you've only got yourself to blame if it's not correct or you've misread it or maybe there's no there's it's not going to do what if you go through a regulated financial advisor you have the protection of the fca financial conduct authority if you have been misadvised you have the ability to complain the ability to have recourse and i think that's a fundamental difference and a good rationale for why you would consider using a financial advisor as well as getting the right level of protection now when we're talking earlier about budgets and we talk about gold standard of cover that's where we start gold standard if budgets are constrained well then we need to then decide well what is it you're going to pull back on is it how long it runs for is it the level of cover is it the term and we can tweak things very quickly and easily to then come up with a bespoke suite if you like of products that match your personal circumstances and i think it's then important to say that you need to have a continued review of those protection plans not every year necessarily but probably every two or three years minimum every five years yeah and like especially if you got it out at medical school maybe you got the hard sell which lots of doctors get the hard sell at medical school if you got that and you're now 10 years later with you know kids a house and several other things going on it's unlikely that original policy is going to be good enough 10 years later so just get it reconsider it and have a look at it with an independent financial advisor who actually understands doctors not a restricted advisor i'm not putting words in your mouth i think it's super interesting to have it from your point of view right because the medical market is dominated by restricted advisors that really annoyed us and we're undominating that market now by doing medic's money but you've seen it from both sides so you're as impartial as you can be because you've been a restricted advisor and then you set up your own independent firm so this is such a massive point it doesn't get enough airtime the industry or lots of the industry don't really want to make this clear to you but hopefully that does make it clear is that fair anything that we need to retract to keep the lawyers happy because they do listen i think it's it's not to say if you're restricted it's wrong advice because that's clearly not the case it's about where you see the value and whether you value having truly independent advice over restricted obviously having been a restricted advisor myself it was always the aspiration to to run my own to be an independent financial advisor because i wanted to make sure that i was able to with a clear conscience give truly independent and best practice advice to my clients and that is why i i am a huge advocate of independent advice over other areas for no other reason apart from that and i just think it's one of those you know if you want to know you're getting the best outcome go to the place where you think you're going to get the best level of opportunity to look at all of the options available to you rather than just going and looking at one particular area 100 so like you set up you were restricted you set up your own independent practice because you wanted to give the gold standard advice and not be restricted in the that's the exact reason that me and ed when we started medics money we could have offered restricted and independent financial advisors on the medics money platform our life would have been a lot easier i would have got less snotty emails from restricted advisors telling me that i'm wrong but we chose not to do that because like you we wanted to offer the gold standard the very best if somebody goes to medics money and finds a financial advisor i want them to know that they are the very best someone that me and ed would consider using we only use independent financial advisors that specialize in medics ourselves so why would we recommend anything else so don't email me again i'm really bored of getting emails from restrictive financial advisors we better leave it there before we get in more trouble mike where is the best place to get in people want to talk this through in detail with you and you really this is not advice okay this is just like information if you want advice you've got to get it specific to your circumstances your circumstances are different to mine different to mike's but where can i get you so obviously through you on the medics money website or you can come direct to our website at medicalgeneral.co.uk or if you have mortgage and protection needs you can come to mortgages for doctors.com mortgages for doctors i like that does well i wonder why you specialize in there hopefully it does what it says on the tape yeah absolutely mike that was awesome thanks so much for your time and that was really helpful take care brilliant thanks so much