What Happens to Your Cover When You Change Jobs

Workplace benefits feel like something you own and are something you borrow.

Death in service, group income protection, private medical: all of it is arranged by the employer, for the employer's staff, and all of it stops on your last day. A new employer may offer something similar, something worse, or nothing, and there is usually a gap in between.

That makes a job change one of the better moments to look at what you personally hold, which for a lot of people turns out to be nothing.

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The short answer

Death in service, group income protection and private medical cover belong to your employer, not to you, and they end when your employment does. People who have relied on them for years discover they have no personal cover at the point they change jobs, and they are a few years older and possibly less healthy than when they could have arranged it cheaply.

What this changes

Death in service ends with the employment, usually immediately
Group income protection ends too, and it is the benefit people least realise they had
A new employer's scheme may have a waiting period before you join it
A new scheme may be a different multiple of salary, or may not exist at all
Any nomination form you completed applies to the old scheme and has to be redone
You are older than when you last could have arranged personal cover cheaply

The bit people miss

Group income protection is the benefit almost nobody knows they have and nobody replaces. It typically pays a percentage of salary if you are unable to work long term, and it is quietly valuable. People leave a job with it, join one without it, and carry on exactly as before with no idea that the safety net underneath them has gone. It usually only surfaces when somebody is ill and discovers the new employer offers statutory sick pay and nothing else.

Find Out What You Are Actually Losing

Before deciding what to replace, it is worth knowing what you had, and most people do not.

Ask HR for the details of your current benefits in writing: the death in service multiple, whether there is group income protection and at what percentage and deferred period, and whether private medical covers family members. Then ask the new employer the same questions before you start, not after. The answers are frequently different in ways that are not mentioned at interview.

That comparison tells you exactly what the gap is. Sometimes there is none. Sometimes somebody is moving from a scheme paying half their salary for years to one paying statutory sick pay for twenty-eight weeks, which is a change worth knowing about in advance.

Personal Cover Follows You

The argument for holding your own policy alongside a workplace scheme is simple: it does not depend on who employs you.

A personal policy stays in force through redundancy, resignation, a career break and going self-employed. It is underwritten once, at your current age and health, and stays on those terms. A workplace scheme is re-underwritten every time you change employer, in effect, because each new scheme assesses you as you are then and may exclude conditions that have appeared since.

That is the real cost of relying entirely on employer cover for a decade: not the premiums you saved, but the terms you could have locked in at thirty and now cannot.

What usually fits, and why

Personal income protection

The thing most likely to have disappeared with the old job, and the one that matters if you are off work for months rather than weeks.

Personal life cover

Replaces death in service with something that belongs to you and follows you between employers rather than resetting each time.

Critical illness cover

Rarely provided by employers at all, so this is usually a gap regardless of which job you are in.

Common questions

Does death in service continue after I leave a job?+

No. It belongs to the employer and ends with the employment, usually immediately. A new employer may offer something similar, something less generous, or nothing at all, and there may be a waiting period before you join their scheme. Any nomination form you completed applies only to the old scheme and has to be done again.

What is group income protection and did I have it?+

It is employer-arranged cover paying a percentage of salary if you are unable to work long term, and it is the benefit people least realise they have. Ask HR in writing. Plenty of people leave a job that had it, join one that does not, and only find out when they are ill and discover the new employer offers statutory sick pay and nothing else.

Should I arrange personal cover even though work provides some?+

It is worth considering, because a personal policy follows you through redundancy, resignation, a career break and self-employment, and stays on the terms it was underwritten on. Employer cover effectively gets reassessed each time you change jobs, and conditions that have appeared in the meantime may be excluded by the new scheme.

When should I sort this out?+

Before you leave, ideally. Personal cover is underwritten on your health at the point you apply, and applying while you are employed, settled and well is simpler than applying during a gap or after something has appeared in your medical records. Ask both employers for their benefit details in writing and work out the gap before your last day.

What if I am going self-employed?+

Then the gap is total: no death in service, no group income protection and no sick pay of any kind. That makes personal income protection the first priority rather than an optional extra, and it is worth arranging before you leave employment rather than after, while your income is straightforward to evidence.

Cover that often goes with this

The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.