In early 2018, an Independent Financial Adviser contacted Wiltshire Friendly with an idea to help semi-professional football clubs insure their contracted players’ salaries against illness or injury.
Tony Pizii, a local Financial Adviser with Temple Wealth Management, and Francis Duku, an ex-player who now runs a player association called Our Game, joined forces to help players and clubs gain access to appropriate financial plans.
Wiltshire Friendly took the research completed by Tony and Francis and created an income protection insurance solution, for semi-professional football clubs. They adapted their Group Income Protection plan to enable a club to help meet its contractual sickness liability, should a player not be actively at work and unable to play through illness or injury. This plan replaces a proportion of a player’s salary and, after an initial deferred period, Wiltshire Friendly would pay sickness benefit to the club… for it to pay to the player.
This solution ‘kicked off’ in late 2018 and one of the clubs who initially took out the plan reaped the benefit when it made a successful claim, for a player who sustained an injury during the 2018/19 season. A number of clubs have now joined and Wiltshire Friendly, Temple Wealth Management and Our Game are pleased to be able to offer this plan to semi-professional football clubs.