By Adam Surtees, Founder, Affinity Advice
Every week we take calls that remind me exactly why I do this.
Some of those calls are the best part of this job. The ones where I get to deliver news that changes everything. Where I can hear the relief in someone’s voice and know that the work we did months or years earlier is the reason their family is going to be okay.
And some of those calls are the hardest thing I do.
The ones where a doctor or dentist calls us already ill. Already off work. Sick pay running out. And I have to tell them there is nothing we can do. Not now. Not when they’re already ill. That window has closed.
This article is about both of those calls. And why the difference between them is almost always one thing: whether someone acted before it was too late.
The call I will never forget
A few years into running Affinity Advice, I got a call from a client. A man in his 30s. We had set up his cover about four or five weeks earlier.
He told me he had found a lump. He was undergoing investigations for testicular cancer.
It was an awful call. But I was able to tell him something that I could hear made a difference immediately: we had sorted his cover, and Affinity Advice could help him process a claim. He wasn’t facing this alone.
What followed was weeks of back and forth. Medical records. Financial evidence. The process that insurance claims always involve. It takes time, and in this case it took a little longer because when he first found the lump he wasn’t sure how long he would be off work, so things moved slowly at first.
His sick pay helped in the early weeks. But as the diagnosis came through and the weeks turned into months, the mood shifted. He knew his sick pay was running out. The financial pressure was building on top of everything else he was dealing with.
About six weeks after the diagnosis, I got the call I had been waiting for.
His critical illness cover was paying out. His income protection would begin paying him monthly. Both policies were confirmed.
I called him. His wife had been dealing with most of the communication because he found it hard to speak to me directly. I asked them both to sit down. They told me the cancer had been caught early and was low grade. And then I told them that LV were paying off their mortgage in full, and that the income protection would continue paying him each month for as long as he needed it.
There was a gasp. Then silence.
Then tears.
That moment is the reason I do this. Not to sell policies. To make sure that when the worst happens, the people I work with don’t have to worry about money on top of everything else.
The near miss nobody talks about
What I haven’t told you yet is how close that outcome came to being very different.
When I first reviewed this client’s cover, he already had a policy in place. It had been arranged by his mortgage adviser when he bought his home. A budget critical illness plan. Standard recommendation. Ticked a box.
The problem: that policy did not cover low grade cancer.
When they told me the cancer had been caught early and was low grade, I already knew what that meant for the old policy. It would not have paid out. The mortgage would not have been cleared. The financial security he and his wife experienced in that moment on speakerphone would not have existed.
We reviewed his cover, identified the gap, and arranged a policy that covered him properly. That review is the reason the call went the way it did.
There is one more detail worth knowing. He cancelled his appointment with us twice before we finally spoke. Twice, life got in the way and he pushed it back. We followed up both times because we always do. We know how important this is. We have a duty of care that goes beyond sending one email and moving on.
Had we not followed up, he may never have got around to it. The old policy would have stayed in place. And the call would have gone very differently.
The other call
Every week, sometimes more than once, we take a different kind of call.
A doctor or dentist on the other end of the line. Already diagnosed. Already off work. Sick pay running out or already gone.
“I’ve been diagnosed with MS. Is there anything you can do for me?”
“I’ve had a stroke. I’m not sure how long I’ll be off, or if I can go back at all. What can you do?”
“I’ve been struggling for months. I’m exhausted. I can’t work. My sick pay is about to stop.”
And the answer, every single time, is nothing.
We cannot help them. Not now. Insurers assess your health at the point of application. Once you are ill, once the diagnosis is there, the window has closed. You cannot insure a house that is already on fire.
Those calls are horrendous. There is no other word for it. These are doctors and dentists who have spent years building careers, building families, building lives. And in the moment they need financial protection most, we have to tell them it is too late to put it in place.
I get those calls more than you would think. Every single one of them stays with me.
The only difference
The client whose mortgage was paid off and the doctor who calls us after a stroke diagnosis are not fundamentally different people.
Same profession. Same risks. Same vulnerability. Same life that could change in an instant.
The only difference is timing.
One had the conversation before anything went wrong. One didn’t.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Income protection and critical illness cover are not something you arrange when you need them. By then it is too late. They are something you arrange while you don’t need them, precisely because you never know when you will.
What we ask of you
We are not in the business of frightening people into decisions. That is not how we work and it is not what this article is trying to do.
But we do have a duty of care. And part of that duty is being honest about what we see every week.
Doctors and dentists who call us ready to act get a thirty minute conversation, complete clarity on their options, and a specialist adviser who understands their world. Some find out they are better covered than they thought. We tell them that.
Doctors and dentists who call us after a diagnosis get a conversation that is one of the hardest we have.
If you have been putting this off, please do not wait for a reason to act. The reason you are waiting for is the reason it will be too late.
Ready to have the right conversation?
At Affinity Advice we specialise exclusively in income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists. We do one thing and we do it properly. No pensions agenda, no cross-selling, no comparison site shortcuts. Just specialist advice from people who understand exactly how healthcare professionals earn and exactly what is at risk if they cannot.
A conversation with one of our specialist advisers takes about thirty minutes and is completely free. No obligation. No pressure.
About the author
Adam Surtees is the founder of Affinity Advice, a UK protection advisory firm specialising exclusively in income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Client details have been anonymised.
