You should have sufficient life insurance to at least clear the mortgage debt but be careful with mortgage protection plans or indeed any added insurance products as good ones are very expensive and most are rife with exclusions.

A more learned person than myself will hopefully elaborate on this.

Nat,

If you have a mortgage the only COMPULSORY insurance you need to have is buildings insurance which you can have either with your lender or another insurer. However dependent on your own circumstances such as do you have a partner or dependents?, how safe is your job? what existing insurance you have? etc will determine what life cover,illness cover etc you need. Your best bet is to see a local IFA who can review your circumstances and recommend a policy that best suits your needs and not the lenders.

I suppose you could contact michaeljtuck who has replied to your post but is he just touting for business? (or I am being a bit cynical!).

life insurance covers you if you die, life assurance covers you when you die, income protection (IPI) covers you if you are unable to work due to sickness, mortgage protection covers you if you are unable to work through accident, sickness or unemployment for no more than 2 years. IPI is very important as it is designed to kick in when your employer starts paying you SSP (c£10/day). My wife, self employed, is currently being paid 65% of her gross income as she is off work following bereavement reaction - neither ASU and life cover would obviously have been of any use in this situation.

Contact an IFA to discuss, don't try to work it out yourself as unless you do it every day you're likely to come unstuck.

Brian