The world of life insurance is complex. Customers are buying an intangible product that can often be confusing and complicated with technical terminology, conditions, obligations, jargon and product documents with many pages outlining what you are or are not covered for.
So, we hosted a webinar about Life Insurance with Austin Fisher, Nation Manager Health and Life at Monument Insurance (NZ) Ltd. You can watch the full webinar here.
In this blog post, we asked Austin to answer all the questions from the webinar, so take a look below.
1. Can you swap to level at anytime? or only on start of policy?
Yes, insurers will allow this but some may have age limits; so check with your adviser. The effect lessens as you get older, so it’s usually good to do this sooner rather than later. Also, you don’t have to convert all of your insurance to level premiums all at once – you can do it gradually if that suits you better.
2. I've always been concerned with getting life insurance while having a pre-existing medical condition. That if complications are able to be tied back to a pre-existing condition any claim would be annulled. Can adequate protection be wrapped around people with pre-existing conditions?
The insurance company takes on board pre-existing medical conditions because you disclose them when you apply. When they issue an Offer of Terms, they will tell you if they have decided to exclude anything. If they do, your Adviser will always be able to ask another insurer to see if they will accept the cover instead.
Once you are covered, that’s it – they have accepted you and will pay the agreed amount on your death or terminal illness as long as you keep paying the premiums. As long as the application is correct and all questions answered clearly, you can be assured that the policy will respond as intended.
Note that insurers do have overriding exclusions applicable to everyone – suicide within the first 13 months, death while committing a crime, or death while engaged in active military service.
3. If my health changes after taking out the cover does that impact my cover.
No. This is the risk that the insurance company is taking. The insurance company knows that our health changes as we get older and charges premiums accordingly.
4. When we talked about some other life insurance and there's also something called trauma insurance and so what's the difference between trauma insurance and life insurance and can I add trauma insurance to a life insurance plan.
Trauma insurance is sometimes called Critical Illness insurance and can be added to Life Insurance or indeed set up as a standalone policy. This is an extra benefit which will mean that if you are diagnosed with a defined serious condition like a heart attack, a serious cancer diagnosis or multiple sclerosis – then the insurance pays out a lump sum to give you some breathing space while you recover. This costs more than Life Insurance because you are more likely to claim and many Trauma Insurance policies allow multiple claims too.
If you have more questions about Life and Health Insurance, you can submit it in the comment section below. Or if you are interested in finding out more about your life and health Insurance options, we have access to a nationwide team of Monument financial advisers who can provide you with more personalised approach. Monument has been our appointed business partner since the early 1990’s to provide financial advice to our members on life and health insurance products (HealthCarePlus is not legally able to provide financial advice).
It won't cost you anything for this chat and there is no obligation for you to do anything following the conversation. But we do strongly recommend that if you are interested in looking at life insurance further that you seek their advice before making any decisions.
So to speak directly to a Monument financial adviser in your local area, please click the button below to book a chat with them.
Leave a comment