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The survey, carried out as part of September's financial planning week, revealed 30 per cent of the population would constantly struggle should their circumstances change for the worse due to long term illness while 48 per cent felt they would struggle from time to time.

Financial planning week is an initiative by the Institute of Financial Planning to encourage and alert people to the importance of financial planning in their lives.

The survey also revealed only a quarter of people thought about future financial priorities and goals and made appropriate plans to achieve them.

Steve Gazzard, operations director at the Institute of Financial Planning, said: "While we were pleased to see from the research that a lot of people do hold some form of protection product, it does appear that more than three quarters of dependants would continue to struggle in the case of long term illness or incapacity."

Financial researchers Defaqto said the YouGov findings backed up its own research, which was published last month.

Ben Heffer, principal consultant for life and protection at Defaqto, said: "The YouGov research underlines what many in the industry already know, that protection has to be sold.

"Providers must be prepared to devote more marketing effort to protection, particularly income protection, and advisers must seek out potential clients to convince them of their need for protection products.

"The credit crunch presents a real opportunity for mortgage brokers, who may be feeling the pinch, to revisit their clients and review their financial plan with an emphasis on protection, which is as important as ever in these difficult times."

Matt Morris, senior policy adviser for protection intermediary LifeSearch, said the findings highlighted the importance of protection.

He said: "Anyone who wants to ensure that they can pay debts and maintain their lifestyle when they are too ill to work really should look into taking out financial protection.

"Income protection should be the first port of call for most people, while unemployment cover is also available for those who are worried about redundancy.

"Part of the problem is that most people believe the state will take care of them if they can no longer work, but they tend to drastically overestimate the amount of state support that is available."

Lifesearch has recently called for an industry wide campaign to promote the importance of protection.