Total permanent disability: the benefit your job description rewrites

One benefit, three definitions

Own occupation pays if illness or injury permanently prevents you doing the essential duties of your job — the strongest basis. Suited occupation pays only if you can't do any job suited to your experience. Work tasks (or activities-of-daily-living) definitions pay only if you permanently cannot perform several basic everyday activities. Typical examples: walking a couple of hundred metres, climbing stairs, lifting a light object at table height, bending, getting in and out of a car, or writing.

Why your job decides

Insurers assign the definition by occupation. A solicitor or software developer is usually offered own-occupation TPD. A bricklayer, roofer or carer is often offered only the work-tasks version. The result is uncomfortable. A tradesperson can be permanently unable to do their trade — and still fail a work-tasks test, because they can technically still walk, bend and write.

The declinature problem

Industry analysis has long suggested that a large majority of claims made under activity-based TPD definitions are declined. That is why professional comparison tools often exclude TPD from quality scoring altogether. The benefit isn't a con. But its real-world value varies enormously with the definition, and buyers are rarely told which one they hold.

What to do with this

If you're in a manual trade, don't rely on TPD as your safety net. Income protection built around your occupation usually matters far more. If you already hold a policy, find out which TPD definition is in it. That check is a standard part of our free cover quality review.