New Sovereign and AIA Trauma Policy Upgrades

There is good news for Sovereign and AIA trauma insurance policyholders - as of March 12th 2019 your trauma policies have been enhanced with a number of additional benefits and upgrades. These enhancements come free and automatically - your existing premiums will remain unaffected by the change.

What has changed and what are the details? We outline the upgrades that your policy now possesses below:

Sovereign Trauma Insurance Enhancements

1. New ‘Severe Illness or Injury Benefit’. Rare or obscure medical conditions can have a major impact due to the unique treatment needs they require. This benefit gives peace of mind that if your condition meets the policy’s definition, even if not formally listed as a covered condition, that you will be able to claim the funds you need from your trauma policy.

2. Medical Advancements Protection Provision. Medical technology and techniques are always advancing and so under this new provision, if any diagnostic techniques or investigations used in your policy wordings have been superseded or improved, this advancement will be taken into consideration when assessing your claim.

3. 40 medical definitions have been updated. New claimable conditions have been introduced. The definition of what constitutes these claimable medical conditions have been enhanced, giving clients more opportunity to claim and more specificity, eliminating possible confusion and giving further peace of mind. Sovereign’s Comprehensive Living Assurance Trauma policies now cover the following: Heart valve replacement or repair, severe burns, cognitive impairment, pneumonectomy, systemic sclerosis, systemic lupus, severe illness or injury (as outlined above) and terminal illness.

4. A new Built-in Counselling Benefit. This benefit covers up to $2,500 towards the cost of a Psychiatrist or Psychologist consultation or counselling following a Trauma claim. This benefit is payable once per policy.

5. A new Built-in Return Home Benefit. This benefit will reimburse the cost of a standard economy flight back to New Zealand for the policy assured and one support person. Up to a maximum of $10,000 is payable should the assured suffer a condition covered under their trauma policy whilst overseas.

6. A new Built-in Bereavement Support Benefit. This benefit provides a lump sum payment that can be used to assist with funeral costs if a child of the policy assured dies. This benefit ceases when the child reaches age 21. It provides $2,000 if the child is under 10 years of age or $15,000 if the child is 10 years of age or more.

7. New Built-in Suspension of Premium Benefit.
This benefit enables the policy assured to temporarily suspend their Trauma cover if they go on parental leave or go on leave without pay for any reason for up to 12 months. The trauma cover can then be reinstated when you are again able to continue the premium payments

8. New Built-in Children’s Trauma Conversion Facility. This benefit allows the Built-in Children’s Trauma Benefit of your policy to be converted to a standalone Trauma policy for your child with a maximum sum assured of $75,000 or 50% of the life assured’s original sum assured.

9. Introduction of a Built-in Premium Conversion Facility. Your policy now allows you to convert all or part of the Trauma Cover premium to a level premium or further level premium structure without having to provide any new medical evidence or screenings.

10. New Built-in Standalone Conversion Facility.
This benefit allows the policy holder to convert your standalone Trauma Cover benefit to an accelerated Trauma Cover benefit with an equal amount of Life Cover without having to provide any new medical evidence or screenings.

11. The Optional Early Cancer Upgrade Benefit has been enhanced. For Prostate Cancer and Malignant melanoma - the amount payable on your claim has been increased to a maximum of $75,000 or 25% of your sum assured.

12. The Optional Children and Maternity Benefit has been enhanced. There has been an increase of the total benefit to $75,000 (or 50% of the sum assured) if your child suffers one of your policy’s specified conditions.

13. The Special Events Increase Facility has been enhanced.
There are now broader definitions of life events that will allow you to increase or change your cover without new applications or medical checks. There are now no restrictions on the Salary Increase Event definition, a new event has been added (‘child of life assured starting secondary education’) and the mortgage event definition has been broadened to include increasing the Mortgage for extensions to your property.

AIA Trauma Insurance Enhancements 

All of the above features also apply to AIA trauma policies. In addition, the following also apply:

1. Introduction of an inbuilt ‘Newborn Children’s Benefit’. Adopts the Sovereign Newborn Children’s Benefit to the AIA personal Trauma policy with a total benefit payable of $50,000 or 20% of the sum assured. This benefit is payable to you on the birth of a newborn child of the life assured who is born with any of the following conditions:

• Cleft palate
• Down’s syndrome,
• Spina bifida,
• Total blindness or;
• Absence of two or more limbs. 

2. New ‘Pregnancy complications benefit’.

This benefit is now part of the optional Children’s Trauma Top Up Benefit. It provides an additional $10,000 lump sum in the event that the life assured suffers one of these outlined pregnancy complications:

• Disseminated intravascular coagulation,
• Eclampsia,
• Hydatidiform mole.

3. Enhancements to the Return to Home and Financial Planning and Legal Benefits. It has been made easier for clients to claim through removing the condition for clients to have been working outside NZ for at least three consecutive months. In effect, this means policy holders can claim even when they are outside of NZ for leisure or non work related reasons. Also there has been an increase in the total benefit available to access Financial and Legal services from $750 to $1,000.

Any Questions or Enquiries? We're Here for You. With the enhancements to Sovereign and AIA policies now in effect, there’s never been a better time to be a policy holder. If you have any questions about your existing policies, or if you wish to review your trauma insurance needs in light of these changes, use the form below or call 09 307 8200 and one of our advisers will be happy to help.

Also, if you aren’t a policy holder and think trauma insurance could be right for you, contact us for a free, no obligation quote or consultation anytime.

Income Protection: Unimportant or a Necessity?

"Online research by insurer AIA last year found that 87 per cent of (Adult New Zealanders) have car insurance, 50 per cent life insurance and only 11 per cent income protection insurance."

After reading such figures, outlined in an article by Diane Clement in an article for the NZ Herald, it raises the immediate question; does this reflect the fact that income protection is less important to have than either car or life insurance? Or is it something else?  Could it reflect the fact that the benefits of car or life insurance are generally well known and understood and cover such as income protection is more unknown, more marginalised, or thought of as unnecessary?

We can often foresee the fact that if we were to die, we would leave behind an uncomfortable financial situation for our family or dependants. After all, its hard to earn a living when you've passed on, and that's a fact that's as clear as day. Hence we see a fairly high percentage of New Zealanders find life insurance something worth investing in. Even more of us can see that car accidents are a real and viable risk. We see them every day on the news, many of us have experienced them first hand and hence we see car insurance as a necessity. The need for income protection however, is perhaps not as immediately obvious.

In our minds, critical illness can sometimes become an 'all or nothing' type proposition. Either we are healthy and able to earn a living or we are struck down critically and pass on quickly, at which time our life cover will provide for our beneficiaries. Unfortunately, the stats aren't kind to these assumptions. As covered more fully here, 94% of deaths in New Zealand only come after a protracted and extended disablement process, during which the sufferer will be unable to work or earn a living, and during which basic life insurance will not be able to be claimed upon. This is the time though, that an income protection policy WOULD kick in, replacing your lost income and making sure your expenses are covered as you go through the recovery process.

 "People will often take life insurance cover and reject income protection insurance as "too expensive", says industry analyst Russell Hutchinson of Chatswood Consulting, even though it is the more valuable cover. They underplay their chances of having an accident or falling ill."

This seems to be the sticking point. We regard death as inevitable and so a large percentage of us prepare for it with life cover. But when it comes to our health, we tend to think that things will largely remain consistent, squared and away.

"Other common reasons that people don't take out income protection or related insurances, says Cave, are that they:

* don't know what it costs
* get confused by analysing too many policies, or
* fear they won't be covered for an illness they've suffered in the past."

 All these issues can be fairly easily dealt with and worked through. In our practice, we've seen a lot of cases where income protection has really helped out our clients, similar to the one cited in the original article:

"A 47-year-old customer who suffered a stroke while playing Pictionary. The man couldn't return to work in his profession as a rock driller for the rest of his life. Thankfully his income protection insurance will support him financially until retirement."

If you are financially able, an income protection policy is something that we heartily reccomend. If the costs are prohibitive, and you find yourself having to choose between income protection and other insurance cover such as basic life, trauma or permanent disablement we advise definitely taking the time to check out the benefits offered by each and considering your personal needs, or ask us and we can help you sort out which cover is best for you.

According to the statistics, a working couple has a 1/3 chance of one of its members suffering a critical illness, and with only 11% of New Zealanders having income protection, a scary amount of people are going to find themselves in need of cover and not having it. Perhaps its something worth considering? Stay tuned in the near future for an article describing in more detail the possible types of income protection, their features and possible benefits. 

Visit our official website for more information.

Read the original article here.

Sunday Star Times: Controversy over Higher Life Premiums for Depression

Today on the front page of the Sunday Star Times (June 23rd 2013 edition), the publication is featuring an article by Kirsty Johnson, detailing the plight of TV presenter Sonia Gray, who sadly struggled with post natal depression, battling her way out of her condition to find that she would then have to face higher life insurance premiums for having her psychological condition.

"I was shocked," she said. "A lot of people have mental health issues around pregnancy. It's often hormonal," she said. "The insurer's reaction was bizarre."

Sonia Gray, TV Presenter and Mother.

This has given rise to a great deal of understandable reaction from both the public, the insurance industry and mental health professionals. Most people understand that it is a fact of life that insurers are private entities, and attempting to secure insurance when health is faltering with ailments, disabilities or long term health conditions will result in higher costs or refusal, in the interest of both the insurer and other clients who would lose their cover and security if the insurer was forced out of the marketplace due to excessive claim costs. However, mental health and depression is a much different entity to physical health problems and disablement.

"Dr Sara Weeks, a maternal psychiatrist... said about 16 percent of New Zealand women were believed to suffer some kind of pregnancy depression... Auckland University senior lecturer in mental health nursing, Anthony O'Brien, feared the policy could lead to complicated diagnoses as doctors tried to avoid using the 'depression' term". 

Mental Health conditions are a very complicated issue, which a panoply of treatments and divisions within the psychology profession on how to approach, understand and treat ailments such as depression. Whilst this is the case, a perception of an across the board policy forcing depression sufferers to pay more will understandably lead only to backlash against the insurance industry, feeding into images of money grubbing ahead of humanity. From our experience of dealing with the insurers directly, this is not fully the case. Whilst it is true that insurers do load policies due to depression, this is mostly in the case of severe depression and the client's personal circumstances are looked at in each case before a decision is made.

Even so, this case demonstrates that sometimes the insurers can get it wrong. The insurers obviously must have a constant and consistent balance between maximising profitability to continue to provide a service that is no doubt valuable and worthwhile to the New Zealand public, whilst having compassion and human interest at heart, and in this instance, perhaps they have been erred too much towards the former. People should be given the benefit of the doubt, and in the absence of conclusive evidence of higher risk, it is unfair to burden them further with policy loading.

What are your views on this controversial issue? Should mental health conditions be treated similarly to physical ones by the insurance industry? Is there really more of a risk of death for post natal depression sufferers, and should this be taken into account? Most importantly, what more can be done to combat the problem of mental health in New Zealand and aid the sufferers of depression, and should the insurance industry have a role to play, however small, in this regard?

Read the original article by Kirsty Johnson, courtesy of Stuff.co.nz.

More information and help for sufferers of depression.  

Feel free to ask us about depression and how it might be affecting your insurance.

Building a plan to protect your business and estate.

If you are the owner of an estate or you manage a business, have you ever thought about what would happen should a tragic and unforeseen deterioration of your health occurs? As insurance professionals, we have seen it happen all too often. As a result of our experience, the number one piece of advice we could give to home or business owners is to put in place a plan using insurance resources. A well worked and comprehensive insurance plan can re-establish control of your finances, leave your estate in your own hands and restore financial balance for you and your family.
Once something goes seriously wrong with your health, well-being and current financial situation, you should look to achieve the following goals in the face of what may well be your most overwhelming adversity: 

• To have the greatest possible access to medical advice, treatment and technology so that you can get yourself well, back on your feet and hopefully limit the effect of the disablement process on your career, income, lifestyle and dependents;
• To be able to control debt as soon into the disablement process as possible. To eliminate or significant reduce outstanding debts and financial obligations.
• To create a certain source of income that will fund your lifestyle and keep your house and/or your business in your hands.

We can attest to just how difficult this has been for many people who have "gone it alone", mistakenly thinking and backing themselves to carry out many of these tasks and functions after their health has come apart at the seams without the necessary insurance. If you are so sick that you can't actually carry out the many vital roles and functions that still need to be carried out within your business, family and estate, then failure, and devastating failure at that, awaits the unwary and unprepared.
 
Our clear and certain belief is that insurance works best when it is used as the basis for a plan that is intended to protect a business, a family or an estate when tragic deterioration of an individual's health occurs. The three goals listed above can be accomplished by having the right type of insurance in place, customised and personalised to your unique situation.  As insurance professionals, we can help you build the right plan for your unique situation and life circumstances. Our capable team does this everyday and have the soundest professional processes in place. Your personal plan should contain the answer to four questions:

• What needs to be protected?
• Who is to do it?
• What authority do they need to act for you?
• Where does the funding that you will need come from?

We can help give you answers to all of these questions. With the right insurance, the funds you require in your time of need will be taken care of. We can help source the best and most competitive insurance on the market from the most reputable sources. Use our skilled and experienced professionals, construct a plan and shield against the risk of losing your most important assets.

If you need help with your plan to protect your business and estate, don't hesitate to contact us at enquiry@sprattfinancial.co.nz or by calling (09) 307 8200.

Visit our official website for more information. 

Read more about the sobering statistics of critical illness in New Zealand.