"Income protection was built for a world where the main risk to your income was your health. Over 2026 and 2027, it is just as likely to be your employer."
- Kiruba Eswaran - Eleos Life
Eleos Life has announced the launch of a new income protection (IP) policy that covers injury, illness and job loss in a single digital policy for full-time employees.
This comes as UK Google searches for "unemployment benefits" have more than doubled in the past year, while searches for "unemployment insurance" have quadrupled, and research by King's College London in May found that 69% of UK workers are concerned about the economic impact of AI job losses, with 38% worried about their own role.
According to Eleos Life, most income protection sold in the UK excludes job loss, and many people are unaware of it. Research published in June by LifeSearch and the HomeOwners Alliance found that 47% of homeowners, and 61% of homeowners who already hold income protection, believe their policy would pay out if they were made redundant.
ONS figures published on 15th September revealed that 114,000 people were made redundant in the three months to July 2026, up 10,000 on a year earlier. Vacancies stand at 702,000, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2014.
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Eleos Life's new IP policy is open to anyone in full-time employment, whether they rent or own, and is bought online in around 15 minutes, with no adviser and no medical examination required.
New style Jobseeker's Allowance is £95.55 a week for a claimant aged 25 or over, for a maximum of 182 days. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that a single homeowner on an average wage who loses their job keeps 12% of their previous take-home income once benefits are counted. The OECD average is 55%.
"Seven in ten UK workers say they are worried about job losses from AI, and the state offers £95.55 a week if it happens to you," Kiruba Eswaran, founder and CEO of Eleos Life (pictured above), said.
"Income protection was built for a world where the main risk to your income was your health. Over 2026 and 2027, it is just as likely to be your employer. We have built one policy that covers both, and you can buy it on your phone."
