Accident, sickness and unemployment protection

ASU stands for accident, sickness and unemployment. It is a short-term insurance product which people take out in case unforeseen circumstances prevent them from working for a period, either due to injury, illness or redundancy. 

ASU is not tied to a particular debt or mortgage; instead it pays you a portion of your previous salary each month, which you can use for anything you like. 

ASU can be used to cover anything you like, including repayments on a mortgage or loan. So if you lose your job, you know you can keep up on your mortgage and keep your household going.

Yes, ASU covers you if you lose your job – provided it’s through no fault of your own. If you’re fired for something bad you’ve done, or if you leave the job without another one lined up, your policy most likely won’t pay out.

ASU is designed to cover involuntary redundancy – when you lose your job without warning. It won’t pay out if you take voluntary redundancy, and it doesn’t work if you are fired for misconduct.

ASU policies are available for people who are self-employed. You need to specify your employment status with your insurer, and the terms may be a little different to regular ASU, but self-employed ASU policies do cover you in the event you can’t work due to illness or injury.

Most ASU policies are short-term; they tend to pay out for 12 months – or 24 months in some circumstances. After this period, if you’re still too ill to work, the government should hopefully pick up the slack.

You can use your ASU payouts for anything you like, but there are specific income protection policies which are designed to cover your mortgage if you lose your job through no fault of your own. 

There are several things that aren't covered by an ASU policy. They include the following:

• Losing your job immediately after you buy: Most policies have a waiting period to prevent fraudulent claims. So if you buy a policy knowing you're about to lose your job, you will find it hard to claim
• If you've not been in your job long enough: You might find it hard to buy ASU if you've just started a new job
• Various medical conditions: ASU policies exclude medical conditions you already know about, and they often don't let people claim if they're off work for stress or back pain

MoneySuperMarket gives you lots of clever ways to save a lot, by doing very little.

• Take control of your credit score by checking and improving it for free with Credit Monitor 
• Never overpay again with Energy Monitor, our energy monitoring service 
• Over 50 ways to Get Money Calm

So how do we make our money? In a nutshell, when you use us to buy a product, we get a reward from the company you’re buying from.

But you might have other questions. Do we provide access to all the companies operating in a given market? Do we have commercial relationships or ownership ties that might make us feature one company above another?

We commit to providing you with clear and informative answers on all points such as this, so we have gathered the relevant information on this page.