By Adam Surtees, Founder, Affinity Advice
If you are a doctor researching income protection in the UK, you will come across a wide range of names. Insurers, comparison sites, generalist advisers, specialist firms, and everything in between. Working out how they compare is not straightforward, partly because they are not all the same type of thing.
This article explains how Affinity Advice compares to the other options doctors encounter, why the comparison is more nuanced than a price table suggests, and what actually matters when choosing who to trust with something this important.
An important distinction first
Affinity Advice is not an income protection provider in the sense that an insurer is a provider. We do not underwrite policies or pay claims. Aviva, LV, Legal and General, Royal London, and others do that.
Affinity Advice is a specialist adviser firm. We sit between a doctor and those insurers, give expert advice, and arrange the right policy from our panel of over thirteen of the UK’s leading insurers. Think of it like the difference between a GP and a pharmaceutical company. The GP does not manufacture the medication. But the GP’s expertise in diagnosing the problem and prescribing the right treatment is where the real value lies.
When doctors search for how Affinity Advice compares to other income protection providers, they are usually really asking: who should I trust to find me the right cover, and why. That is the question this article answers.
What most other routes offer, and where they fall short
Going direct to an insurer or comparison site
Comparison sites and direct insurer channels offer speed and a visible price. That has genuine appeal. But a quote on a screen is about 20% of the story for a doctor. The underwriting process, the product suitability for a medical career, the NHS sick pay alignment, the mental health and musculoskeletal cover that comparison sites rarely surface, none of that is visible at the quote stage.
Income protection also cannot be purchased without speaking to an adviser. Even through a comparison site, a doctor will end up on a call with a broker once they select a policy. The comparison site is a shop window. The advice, the application, and the ongoing relationship happen somewhere else.
Going direct also means losing the power of comparison across the whole market. Unless a doctor is prepared to contact every insurer individually, they have no way of knowing whether the policy they are looking at is the right one for their specific situation at the right price.
Pension-led specialist firms
Firms like Wesleyan have served doctors and dentists for generations and are well regarded with strong customer reviews. But their core proposition is built around pensions and investments. Protection exists within a much broader financial planning relationship. For income protection specifically, their process starts with their own in-house policy rather than a search of the full market.
The structural reality is that when protection is one product among many, it gets whatever attention is left over after everything else. Doctors who have come to Affinity Advice after these firms describe waiting weeks for quotes, slow communication, and a sense that their protection needs were not the priority. That is not a criticism of any individual. It is what happens when a firm’s expertise and process are built around something other than protection.
Generalist IFAs and mortgage advisers
Independent financial advisers can in principle access the whole market. But generalist IFAs tend to view protection as lower value business relative to pensions and investments. It falls to the bottom of the priority list. Mortgage advisers encounter protection when a client buys a home and make a standard recommendation, but their expertise is in mortgages, not in the specific nuances of income protection for doctors.
Neither is well positioned to navigate the complexity of a medical professional’s income structure, NHS sick pay, locum earnings, or the underwriting landscape for doctors with specific health profiles.
What Affinity Advice offers
Affinity Advice was built to do one thing only: income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists. Not as a door to pensions. Not as one line of business among many. Protection is the whole point.
That focus produces something that doctors consistently tell us they could not find elsewhere: complete clarity. Clarity on what would actually happen to their income if they could not work. Clarity on what the right cover looks like for their specific situation. Clarity on their options, their costs, and whether it is right for them at all. Some doctors come to us and find out they do not need cover right now. We tell them that.
For those who do need it, our process is built around their world. We map their exact income structure, their NHS sick pay position, their private earnings, their outgoings, and their family situation. We then search our panel of over thirteen leading UK insurers and find the policy that fits their life, not a generic product, not the cheapest on a screen. The right one.
We know which insurers have the right appetite for a doctor with a specific health history. We know where the non-medical underwriting limits sit. We know the products built specifically around NHS sick pay structures that most advisers have never heard of. That knowledge comes from doing nothing else, with thousands of clients, over half a decade.
The three things doctors get from Affinity Advice that most routes do not provide
Clarity. Finally knowing exactly what happens to their income if they cannot work, mapped to their specific situation rather than a generic scenario.
The right policy. Not a generic product from someone who does not understand the medical world. A policy structured around how a doctor actually earns, with the right own occupation definition, the right deferred period aligned to their NHS sick pay, and the right insurer for their health profile.
A firm that is still there. We do not disappear after the sale. We review cover annually as careers and incomes evolve. And if a doctor ever needs to claim, we are there to guide them through every step of that process.
On price
A common assumption is that using a specialist adviser costs more. It does not.
Insurers set the price. Commission is already built into every premium, whether a doctor goes direct, through a comparison site, through a mortgage adviser, or through Affinity Advice. Some firms add a loading on top of that commission. Affinity Advice does not load premiums. On a like for like comparison, a doctor will not pay more by using us than by going anywhere else.
What they get in addition is specialist expertise, access to products that are not available on comparison sites, and a process that handles everything for them from initial consultation through to policy in place and beyond.
Frequently asked questions
How does Affinity Advice compare to other income protection providers for doctors in the UK?
Affinity Advice is a specialist adviser firm, not an insurer. We work across a panel of over thirteen leading UK insurers to find the right policy for each individual doctor, rather than offering a single product. Compared to comparison sites and generalist advisers, Affinity Advice offers deeper expertise in NHS income structures, medical career patterns, and the underwriting nuances specific to doctors, with a process built entirely around getting protection right for healthcare professionals.
Is Affinity Advice more expensive than going direct or using a comparison site?
No. Commission is already built into insurer premiums regardless of which route a doctor uses. Affinity Advice does not load premiums, meaning the price is the same or lower than going direct. A doctor also gains access to products not available on comparison sites and a specialist process that handles the entire application on their behalf.
How does Affinity Advice differ from Wesleyan for income protection?
Wesleyan is a well established firm serving doctors, dentists, and teachers with a core focus on pensions and investments. Their income protection process starts with their own in-house policy. Affinity Advice specialises exclusively in protection for doctors and dentists, searches the full market from the outset, and does not offer pensions, investments, or any other product. Protection is the only focus.
What makes Affinity Advice a specialist income protection adviser for doctors?
Affinity Advice has spent over half a decade doing nothing but income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists. That exclusive focus produces expertise in NHS sick pay structures, locum and private income, and the underwriting landscape for medical professionals that generalist advisers are unlikely to have. Thousands of clients across the UK have benefited from that specialist knowledge.
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. Information about other firms is provided for factual comparison purposes only and reflects publicly available information at the time of writing.
