Royal London
Royal London Life Insurance and Protection
Royal London is one of the UK’s major protection providers, offering life insurance, critical illness cover, income protection and a broad range of business protection.
As a mutual, Royal London is customer-owned rather than being owned by external shareholders. Its current protection proposition includes flexible Personal Menu Plans, specialist life insurance for people with diabetes, whole-of-life insurance and business protection.
At Kerr & Watson, we can compare Royal London with other suitable protection insurers to establish which provider, policy features and underwriting approach are most appropriate for your circumstances.
Could Royal London be the right protection provider for you?
Royal London can be particularly relevant if you are looking for flexible life insurance, critical illness cover or income protection, including the ability to combine different types of protection within one overall plan.
At Kerr & Watson, we compare Royal London with other suitable protection insurers to establish which provider, level of cover and policy structure are most appropriate for your circumstances.
Who Are Royal London?
Royal London is a UK mutual life, pensions and investment company with a history stretching back more than 150 years.
Unlike a conventional shareholder-owned insurer, Royal London is customer-owned.
Within protection, Royal London currently offers a wide range of personal and business insurance.
Its current range includes:
- Life Cover
- Critical Illness Cover
- Life or Critical Illness Cover
- Children’s Critical Illness Cover
- Income Protection
- Family Income Benefit
- Diabetes Life Cover
- Whole of Life Insurance
- Relevant Life
- Business Protection
Many of its personal protection options can be combined through Royal London’s Personal Menu Plan.
Royal London Personal Menu Plan
One of Royal London’s main protection propositions is its Personal Menu Plan.
Rather than arranging completely separate policies for every financial risk, the Menu Plan allows different types of cover to be combined within one overall arrangement.
This can include:
- Life Cover
- Critical Illness Cover
- Life or Critical Illness Cover
- Children’s Critical Illness Cover
- Income Protection
- Waiver of Premium
Different amounts of cover and policy terms can be selected depending on what each part of the insurance is intended to protect.
For example, you might have one amount of life insurance protecting your mortgage and another amount designed to support your family.
You could then add income protection to help with household expenditure if illness or injury prevents you from working.
This flexibility can be useful, but it does not mean every available benefit needs to be included.
Our role is to establish which risks actually need protecting.
Royal London Life Insurance
Life insurance is designed to provide financial support if the insured person dies during the policy term.
The payment could potentially help:
- Repay a mortgage
- Support a surviving partner
- Replace household income
- Provide for children
- Repay other debts
- Meet everyday living costs
- Provide longer-term financial security
Royal London currently offers advised life insurance with different ways of structuring the cover.
This includes level, decreasing and increasing options.
Level Life Insurance
Level life insurance provides a fixed amount of protection throughout the term.
For example, if you arrange £300,000 of level life insurance, the insured amount would normally remain £300,000 for the agreed policy term.
This can be useful where you want to:
- Protect an interest-only mortgage
- Leave a fixed amount to your family
- Cover borrowing that is not reducing
- Provide a general financial safety net
Decreasing Life Insurance
Decreasing life insurance is commonly used to protect a repayment mortgage.
The amount insured gradually reduces throughout the term, broadly reflecting the way a repayment mortgage balance is expected to fall.
Because the amount of insurance reduces, it can cost less than an equivalent amount of level cover.
However, whether level or decreasing cover is appropriate depends on what you want the insurance to achieve.
Increasing Life Insurance
Royal London also allows certain life insurance to increase over time.
This can help protect the real value of the policy against inflation.
Without increases, a £300,000 policy arranged today may have considerably less spending power after 20 or 30 years.
Increasing cover normally means the premium will also rise.
We can consider whether this additional cost is worthwhile based on the purpose of your insurance.
Royal London Dual Life Cover
Royal London’s Personal Menu Plan also provides flexibility for couples through Dual Life cover.
With a conventional joint-life-first-event policy, the policy generally ends following the first successful claim.
Dual Life works differently.
Each person’s protection is effectively kept separate within the same overall plan.
This means one person can have a different amount or term of cover from the other, and a successful claim by one person does not necessarily end the other person’s protection.
This can be particularly useful for couples who have different protection requirements.
Family Income Benefit
Royal London allows Life Cover and Critical Illness Cover to be structured as Family Income Benefit.
Instead of providing one large lump sum following a successful claim, the cover can provide regular monthly payments for the remaining term.
For example, this could help replace income used for:
- Mortgage payments
- Food
- Household bills
- Childcare
- School fees
- Travel
- General family expenditure
Family Income Benefit can sometimes be a cost-effective way of protecting a family’s ongoing income rather than trying to calculate one large lump sum.
It can also be useful where somebody has an ongoing maintenance commitment.
Whether a lump sum, regular income or combination of both is appropriate will depend on what you are trying to protect.
Royal London Critical Illness Cover
Critical illness cover is designed to provide a financial payment if you are diagnosed with one of the serious medical conditions covered by the policy and meet the insurer’s definition.
Royal London’s current critical illness proposition includes full-payment conditions alongside additional-payment conditions.
A successful payment could potentially help with:
- Repaying or reducing a mortgage
- Replacing lost earnings
- Household expenditure
- Rehabilitation
- Private medical treatment
- Modifications to your home
- Allowing a partner to reduce their working hours
The money does not normally need to be spent on a particular item.
Additional Critical Illness Payments
Not every serious medical diagnosis necessarily results in the full insured amount being paid.
Royal London’s current Critical Illness Cover also includes additional conditions where a proportion of the insured amount may be paid.
For example, this can include certain earlier-stage conditions that meet Royal London’s policy definitions.
An additional payment does not necessarily cancel the main critical illness protection.
When comparing critical illness insurers, we therefore look beyond simply counting the number of illnesses listed.
We consider:
- Full-payment definitions
- Additional-payment definitions
- Children’s cover
- Total permanent disability
- Policy flexibility
- Additional support
Children’s Critical Illness Cover
Royal London allows customers with eligible critical illness protection to add children’s critical illness cover.
There are different levels available, including Standard and Enhanced Children’s Critical Illness Cover.
Depending on the option selected, protection can include:
- Main critical illness conditions
- Child-specific conditions
- Total permanent disability
- Terminal illness
- Additional payment conditions
- A payment following the death of a child
Enhanced cover can provide a wider range of benefits.
Importantly, an eligible claim for a child does not reduce the parent’s main Critical Illness Cover.
Whether children’s protection is appropriate will depend on your family circumstances and budget.
Why Would Children’s Critical Illness Cover Be Useful?
A child’s serious illness can have a financial impact on the whole family.
A parent may need to:
- Stop working temporarily
- Reduce their hours
- Travel regularly to hospital
- Pay for accommodation
- Arrange childcare for other children
- Make changes at home
Critical illness protection can provide financial flexibility while the family concentrates on the child’s treatment and recovery.
Royal London Income Protection
Royal London also offers income protection.
Income protection is designed to provide a regular monthly payment if illness or injury prevents you from carrying out your job and causes a loss of earnings.
For many people, their ability to work is what supports almost every other financial commitment they have.
Income pays for:
- Mortgage or rent
- Utility bills
- Food
- Childcare
- Loans
- Insurance
- Travel
- Everyday living costs
If your earnings stop, those commitments generally continue.
Income protection can help replace part of your earnings while you are unable to work.
How Much Income Can Royal London Protect?
Royal London’s current Income Protection proposition can insure up to a proportion of pre-tax earnings.
The calculation currently allows up to 65% of the first portion of earnings and a lower percentage of earnings above that level, subject to the insurer’s overall limits.
For most customers, the aim should not simply be to insure the maximum possible amount.
We can consider:
- Existing employer sick pay
- Savings
- Household expenditure
- Your partner’s income
- Existing insurance
- State benefits
and establish an appropriate level of monthly protection.
Own-Occupation Income Protection
Royal London’s income protection assesses eligible claims against your ability to carry out your own occupation, subject to the policy terms.
This can be particularly important.
Being physically capable of undertaking another form of work is not necessarily the same as being capable of returning to the occupation from which you normally earn your income.
The definition used by an insurer is one of the areas we consider carefully when comparing income protection policies.
Choosing a Deferred Period
Income protection does not normally start paying immediately when you stop working.
The period before an eligible claim begins paying is called the deferred period.
Royal London provides several deferred-period options.
The appropriate choice depends on what support you already have.
For example, if your employer provides six months of full sick pay, you may not need your complete income protection benefit to begin immediately.
Someone who is self-employed and has limited savings may require an earlier start.
We can structure the policy around your circumstances rather than automatically choosing the shortest waiting period.
Income Protection for Self-Employed People
Royal London can also be worth considering for self-employed income protection.
Self-employed customers often have a greater need for income protection because they may have no employer-funded sick pay.
Royal London’s current proposition also allows qualifying self-employed customers to take certain regular fixed business overheads into account when calculating the amount that can be protected.
This can potentially include expenses that continue even when the individual is unable to work.
The exact calculation depends on the customer’s circumstances and current policy rules.
Fracture Cover
Royal London’s current Income Protection includes fracture cover as a standard feature.
This can provide an additional financial payment following specified fractures.
A fracture may prevent somebody from working even if they are otherwise healthy, particularly where their occupation involves:
- Driving
- Manual work
- Physical duties
- Standing for long periods
- Using machinery
The additional payment can therefore provide support alongside the main income protection policy.
Hospitalisation Payment
Royal London also currently includes a hospitalisation benefit with Income Protection.
This can provide additional financial support following an eligible period in hospital, subject to the policy terms.
As with fracture cover, this sits alongside the core income protection rather than replacing it.
Support When a Child Is Seriously Ill
Royal London materially enhanced its Income Protection proposition in 2026.
Its current cover includes additional support for certain serious events involving the policyholder’s child.
This includes financial support in specified circumstances involving serious childhood illness and hospitalisation.
This is different from the normal income protection claim, which is based on the insured adult being unable to work.
It recognises that a parent may also suffer a loss of earnings because they need to stop working temporarily to care for a seriously ill child.
Returning to Work
Returning to work after illness or injury is not always immediate.
A customer may initially need to:
- Work fewer hours
- Carry out reduced duties
- Return gradually
- Take a lower-paid role
Royal London’s income protection includes support designed to help customers return to work, including a back-to-work payment in eligible circumstances.
This can provide additional help with some of the costs associated with returning after an extended absence.
Income Protection for NHS Professionals
Royal London also has specific income protection features designed around the sick-pay structure available to eligible NHS medical professionals.
This can be useful because NHS sick pay can reduce in stages depending on length of service and time away from work.
Rather than paying for insurance that duplicates existing employer benefits, the policy can be structured around when those benefits reduce.
We can assess your exact sick-pay entitlement when recommending cover.
Royal London Diabetes Life Cover
One particularly distinctive part of Royal London’s current proposition is Diabetes Life Cover.
This is a specialist life insurance product designed specifically for people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.
The application process considers the customer’s diabetes and HbA1c readings.
Customers can provide updated HbA1c results over time and, where their diabetes control improves sufficiently, Royal London may reduce the premium.
Importantly, the premium cannot increase above the original starting amount under the current product structure.
This can make Royal London worth researching where somebody with diabetes requires life insurance.
It remains a life insurance product rather than critical illness or income protection specifically designed for diabetes.
Life Insurance with Other Medical Conditions
A medical condition does not automatically prevent someone from obtaining life insurance, critical illness cover or income protection.
However, different insurers can take very different approaches.
Depending on the circumstances, an insurer could:
- Offer standard terms
- Increase the premium
- Apply an exclusion
- Request further medical information
- Postpone an application
- Decline a particular type of cover
Royal London may be one of the providers we research where somebody has a pre-existing medical condition.
Rather than publishing fixed medical criteria, which can change and depend heavily on the individual case, we can investigate the current position before making an application.
Royal London Helping Hand
Protection arranged through a Royal London adviser proposition currently includes access to Helping Hand.
Helping Hand provides a range of health and wellbeing services.
These currently include areas such as:
- 24/7 virtual GP services
- Mental wellbeing support
- Physiotherapy support
- Personalised health information
- Dedicated nurse support
- Support following serious illness
- Bereavement support
- Medical second opinions where appropriate
Support can also extend to the policyholder’s partner and children in eligible circumstances.
Helping Hand can be accessed even where no insurance claim has been made.
However, these are additional services rather than contractual insurance benefits and can change or be withdrawn.
We therefore would not recommend Royal London solely because of Helping Hand.
Royal London Whole of Life Insurance
Royal London also currently offers advised Whole of Life Insurance.
Unlike term life insurance, which only provides cover for an agreed number of years, whole-of-life insurance is designed to remain in place for life provided the required premiums continue to be paid.
Whole-of-life cover can potentially be considered for:
- Inheritance tax planning
- Estate planning
- Providing an inheritance
- Funeral costs
- Other long-term financial commitments
Royal London’s adviser literature refers to its whole-of-life proposition as the Pegasus Whole of Life Plan.
This is a specialist form of protection and will not be suitable simply because somebody wants general life insurance.
Where inheritance tax or estate planning is involved, appropriate legal and tax advice may also be required.
Royal London Relevant Life Plan
Royal London also offers a Relevant Life Plan.
Relevant life insurance is an individual life insurance policy arranged and paid for by an employer for an employee.
The employee can include a company director.
It can be particularly relevant to smaller businesses that want to provide an individual death-in-service benefit without establishing a full group life insurance scheme.
The policy must be structured correctly and placed into an appropriate Relevant Life trust.
Royal London’s current proposition also allows different cover structures, making it a provider we may consider where relevant life protection is required.
The tax treatment of Relevant Life depends on the circumstances and current legislation, so appropriate tax advice may be required.
Royal London Business Protection
Royal London also has an extensive business protection proposition.
Its Business Menu Plan can combine different types of protection within one arrangement.
Current options include:
- Life Cover
- Critical Illness Cover
- Life or Critical Illness Cover
- Income Protection
- Key Person Income Protection
- Waiver of Premium
These benefits can be structured around different business risks.
Key Person Protection
A key person is somebody whose absence, serious illness or death could significantly affect the financial performance of a business.
This might include:
- A founder
- Director
- Senior salesperson
- Technical specialist
- Employee responsible for important client relationships
Key Person Protection can provide money to the business following an eligible claim.
The payment could potentially help with:
- Lost profits
- Recruitment
- Training a replacement
- Business disruption
- Debt repayment
- Maintaining cash flow
The amount required should be based on the potential financial loss rather than simply choosing an arbitrary level of insurance.
Key Person Income Protection
Royal London also offers Key Person Income Protection.
Rather than providing a lump sum following death or critical illness, this can provide a regular monthly payment where an insured key person becomes unable to work because of illness or injury.
The money is paid to the business and can help replace some of the profit that person would otherwise have generated.
This can be particularly relevant where a business could survive losing an employee permanently but would face significant cash-flow pressure if that person were unable to work for an extended period.
Shareholder and Partnership Protection
Protection can also be arranged to help business owners deal with the death or serious illness of a shareholder, partner or member.
Without appropriate planning, the deceased person’s share of a business could pass to their beneficiaries.
The remaining owners may want to purchase those shares but may not have sufficient cash available.
Insurance can provide the necessary funding following a successful claim.
The protection normally needs to work alongside suitable legal agreements and trusts.
Specialist legal and tax advice may therefore also be required.
Business Loan Protection
Business debts can create additional risk if a key owner or director dies or becomes critically ill.
Royal London’s Business Menu Plan can be used to protect borrowing where appropriate.
This could potentially include:
- Commercial borrowing
- Business loans
- Director’s loans
- Other qualifying business debts
The correct structure depends on the borrowing, business and people involved.
Underwrite Later
Royal London also offers an Underwrite Later feature in certain circumstances.
This can allow some life protection to begin following an initial underwriting assessment while Royal London waits for additional medical evidence required to complete the full application.
This can be useful where there is a genuine need for protection to begin promptly but further medical information has been requested.
It is subject to eligibility, limits and Royal London’s underwriting assessment.
Royal London Protection Claims
Claims statistics can provide useful context when researching an insurer, although they cannot guarantee the outcome of a future individual claim.
Royal London reported that it paid 98.4% of protection claims in 2025, paying approximately £821 million to more than 62,000 customers, families and businesses.
This included claims across areas such as:
- Life insurance
- Terminal illness
- Critical illness
- Income protection
Every claim still needs to meet the terms and definitions of the individual policy.
How Much Does Royal London Protection Cost?
There is no standard price for Royal London protection.
The premium can depend on factors including:
- Your age
- Health
- Smoking status
- Occupation
- Lifestyle
- Amount of cover
- Policy term
- Type of protection
- Whether cover is level, decreasing or increasing
- Additional benefits
Income protection will also depend on factors such as:
- Earnings
- Occupation
- Deferred period
- Amount of monthly benefit
- Policy term
Business protection will depend on the individual being insured and the financial risk being protected.
Rather than using generic example premiums, we can obtain personalised quotations and compare them with other suitable providers.
Is Royal London the Right Insurer for Me?
Royal London can be worth considering because of the breadth and flexibility of its protection proposition.
It may be particularly relevant if you want:
- Life insurance
- Critical illness cover
- Income protection
- Family Income Benefit
- More than one type of protection within a Menu Plan
- Diabetes-specific life insurance
- Whole-of-life insurance
- Relevant Life
- Business protection
However, Royal London will not automatically be the right insurer for every customer.
We also need to consider:
- Your medical history
- Occupation
- Income
- Employer benefits
- Existing insurance
- Amount of cover required
- Policy definitions
- Underwriting
- Budget
Another insurer may provide more appropriate terms or features.
Why Use Kerr & Watson for Protection Advice?
Protection advice involves more than choosing an insurer with a familiar name.
At Kerr & Watson, we can:
- Establish what needs protecting
- Calculate an appropriate level of cover
- Review existing insurance
- Consider employer benefits
- Research suitable insurers
- Carry out pre-application underwriting research where appropriate
- Compare policy features and definitions
- Compare premiums
- Consider personal and business protection
- Explain our recommendation clearly
- Complete the application
- Help throughout the underwriting process
We are not tied to Royal London, so we can compare its proposition with other suitable protection providers.
Speak to Kerr & Watson About Royal London Protection
Royal London offers one of the broader adviser-led protection propositions in the UK.
Its range includes life insurance, critical illness cover, Family Income Benefit and income protection, with specialist options including Diabetes Life Cover, Whole of Life Insurance and Relevant Life.
For business owners, its Business Menu Plan can also provide protection for areas such as key people, business owners and company borrowing.
However, the most appropriate insurer depends on what you need to protect, your health, occupation, income, business circumstances and budget.
At Kerr & Watson, we can compare Royal London with other suitable protection insurers and recommend cover based on your individual circumstances.
Whether you are protecting your mortgage, family, income, estate or business, speak to Kerr & Watson and we can help you understand your options.
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