While the woman is increasingly the main breadwinner in the UK household, she fails to realise that this has created a need for her to take life and critical illness insurance, according to AXA.
Life insurance cover and critical illness insurance are the standard tools for protecting our income against illness or a tragic event. Despite this, women are failing to see their real value, AXA says.
Predictions are that by 2030, women will be the main breadwinner in 1 in 4 homes in the UK. Wage inequalities are also lessening, giving female earners a stronger position than ever before and also increasing their ability to buy life insurance.
For women with dependent children, AXA has found that 27% already pay the family mortgage, 30% are solely responsible for the main family bills, 25% pay for their children’s education, and 29% pay the childcare costs.
For women not working, the full-time ‘domestic engineers’ who take care of the children, their value to the household is £23,000, according to AXA.
However, only 38% of women have life insurance cover, and only 1 in 5 (18%) have critical illness insurance.
The figures also show why it makes such good sense for women to buy life and critical illness insurance – of those who do, 1 in 10 suffer a setback that enables them to claim before the end of their policy, according to AXA.
Of those breadwinners who do have insurance, most are woefully under-insured. The average value of their life insurance cover is £90,000 and their critical illness insurance £80,000, equivalent to cover just two years of the average working woman’s worth (which AXA calculates at £45,000 based on job salary plus real value of work done at home).
