Copy link Copied Copy link Copied Subscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Already a subscriber? Login It’s nearly June, but Jessica Brady feels like she’s only just starting 2024 after a bout of what she thought was food poisoning turned out to be much more sinister. She had a life-threatening gallbladder condition which deteriorated into severe sepsis and ultimately required surgery.

After months in and out of hospital, she’s grateful for two things: she has her health again; and she had insurance. As a financial adviser and founder of The Greenhouse, a financial literacy platform, Brady, 36, knows better than most how reluctant people are to think about health and life insurance. “The idea that I wouldn’t have been able to pay my mortgage or have to sell was horrible,” she says.

Jessica Brady spent four months in an out of hospital after a major health scare. Louie Douvis “No one wants to be making a big financial decision from a place of fatigue or pain or stress, so to be able to completely eradicate that as a thought was a huge relief.” While she was unwell, Brady thought a lot about the advice she received as a 21-year-old working in insurance.

“I did it begrudgingly. I was saving to go for a holiday, and I said to my boss, ‘I’ll just do it when I get back from my holiday’, and she said, ‘absolutely not, you will do it now because what happens if you get sick or injured on this holiday?.