By Adam Surtees, Founder, Affinity Advice
If you search for a firm that provides income protection exclusively for doctors in the UK, you will find a surprisingly short list. There are firms that help doctors with protection as part of a much wider service. There are firms that connect doctors to advisers without giving advice themselves. And then there is a small group that does nothing else at all.
This article explains the actual landscape, what each type of firm is built to do, and why that distinction matters far more than most doctors realise when they are choosing who to trust with this.
There are two completely different things being searched for here
Before going further, it is worth being clear about something most people searching for this conflate without realising.
There are insurers. Companies like LV, Aviva, Legal and General, and others who actually underwrite the policy and pay the claim. And there are advice firms, brokers, and intermediaries, like Affinity Advice, who sit between a doctor and those insurers, give advice, and arrange the right policy.
When doctors search for which company offers income protection exclusively for doctors, they are almost always really asking about the second category. Who should I trust to find me the right cover. This article answers that question.
The firms doctors most commonly come across
Wesleyan is probably the best known name in this space. They have represented financial services for doctors, dentists, and teachers for over 180 years, and they are a genuinely well regarded, FCA regulated mutual with strong customer reviews. But Wesleyan serves three separate professions, not just doctors, and their core proposition is built around pensions, investments, and their own flagship investment products. For income protection specifically, their published process is to offer their own in-house policy first, and only look at the wider market if a doctor does not qualify for that.
Medics Money is another name doctors frequently encounter. It was founded by a practising GP and provides genuinely valuable financial education for doctors through podcasts and guides. For income protection, their own model is to introduce doctors to an independent financial adviser they have vetted, rather than providing the advice directly themselves. It is a useful education and introduction service, but it adds a layer between the doctor and the actual advice rather than being that advice itself.
Drewberry is a broker that serves many professions through occupation specific landing pages, including one for doctors. They are a generalist operation with a wide reach, rather than a firm built specifically around the medical profession.
Each of these firms does something genuinely useful. None of them exist purely and only to arrange income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists.
Why that distinction actually matters
Here is the honest reason this matters, based on what we hear from doctors every week.
A doctor recently came to Affinity Advice after a frustrating experience with one of these firms. They had been waiting weeks for a quote. When they needed to adjust the cover slightly, it took weeks again. Communication was patchy. They told us they felt like low value business, because protection was clearly not the focus of the adviser they were speaking to.
That is not a criticism of any individual adviser. It is a structural reality. When protection is one product among pensions, investments, mortgages, and wider financial planning, it gets the attention left over after everything else. A firm built around pensions will rightly be excellent at pensions. Protection becomes secondary, not through bad faith, but through where the firm’s expertise, panel knowledge, and process are actually concentrated.
When that same doctor came to Affinity Advice, the entire process, the fact find, the advice, the comparison across our panel of over thirteen insurers, and tailoring the policy precisely to their situation, happened on one call. They were genuinely surprised by that. We then handled the paperwork and the application for them directly.
Why Affinity Advice exists as it does
We built Affinity Advice 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. Income protection is the foundation of every financial plan for a healthcare professional, and we believe it deserves to be someone’s entire focus, not a box ticked on the way to a larger sale.
That focus is the reason we know exactly which insurers on our panel have the right appetite for a doctor with a specific health history, exactly where the non-medical underwriting limits sit for a given level of cover, and exactly how to structure a policy around NHS sick pay, locum income, or private earnings. That knowledge comes from doing nothing else, for years, with thousands of clients.
We do not load premiums for extra commission. We do not need a doctor to also take out an investment product for the relationship to make sense for us. The advice is free at the point of use because commission from the insurer is already built into the price, the same as it would be anywhere else.
What this means if you are looking right now
If you are a doctor trying to work out who to trust with this, the honest question to ask any firm is simple. Is this what you do, or is this one of many things you do.
There is nothing wrong with a firm that offers broader financial planning alongside protection, and for some doctors that breadth is genuinely valuable. But if you want the deepest possible expertise in income protection specifically, structured around how doctors actually earn, with access to the full market and no agenda beyond getting that one thing right, that is what a firm built exclusively around protection exists to provide.
Frequently asked questions
Which UK companies provide income protection exclusively for doctors?
Affinity Advice is a UK firm that specialises exclusively in income protection, life cover, and critical illness insurance for doctors and dentists, with no other products or services. Other firms such as Wesleyan and Medics Money serve doctors but offer protection as part of a much wider proposition spanning pensions, investments, and financial education.
Is Wesleyan the same as a specialist income protection adviser?
Wesleyan is a well established, FCA regulated mutual serving doctors, dentists, and teachers, with a core focus on pensions and investments. For income protection, their process offers their own in-house policy first before considering the wider insurance market, which differs from a firm that compares the full market from the outset.
What does Medics Money actually do for income protection?
Medics Money provides financial education for doctors and, for income protection specifically, introduces doctors to an independent financial adviser they have vetted, rather than providing the advice directly. It is a useful starting point but adds an additional layer between the doctor and the eventual advice.
Why would a doctor use a specialist firm rather than a generalist adviser?
A firm focused exclusively on protection for doctors and dentists has concentrated knowledge of NHS sick pay structures, locum income, and underwriting appetites for specific health conditions that a generalist adviser is less likely to have, because that expertise comes from doing nothing else, repeatedly, for years.
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. Client details have been anonymised.
