Trauma & Critical Illness Insurance

Make sure a serious illness or injury doesn’t destroy your financial stability

What is Trauma Cover: In simple words trauma insurance provides your family with a lumpsum amount in case you are diagnosed with a serious illness or critical condition. The serious conditions are listed medical conditions as specified by Insurance Provider.

This type of insurance usually covers up to 50+ different illnesses and injuries, normally categorised under the following heads:

Cancer
Heart Related conditions
Loss of function
Brain & Nerves
Miscellaneous events

Trauma cover comes under the following options:

Accelerated: Accelerated option reduces your life cover as well by the claim payment amount in event of any claim. With accelerated option it is important to keep both life cover and trauma cover buy back as with these you can reinstate your cover in the future after 6 or 12 months depending on claimable condition. Accelerated Trauma cover comes with a lower price than Standalone Cover.

Standalone: Standalone option makes your trauma cover independent of life cover and does not reduce your life cover in the event of any claim. With this option you only require trauma buyback option to reinstate your cover in future after 6 or 12 months depending on claimable condition.

Why do you Need It:

With trauma cover in place, you can live stress free regarding managing finances while diagnosed with an eligible serious illness or critical condition, giving you a chance to focus on treatment. You should have trauma cover to cover the following:

Cover your mortgages: When you are unable to work you and your family will still have a roof over you, you do not have to go through stress of paying mortgage instalments.
Cover your debts/personal loans or any short of small term loans: Nobody wants lenders at their doorsteps continually requesting family members to pay off any outstanding lending amount through an already stressful situation.
Medical Treatment Costs: Average medical treatment costs in NZ are quite high, non-pharma drugs are not eligible for public funding and are used quite often for cancer treatments. With Trauma insurance in place, you can have access to the best private treatment available with funding non-pharma drugs.
Return Home Benefit: If you are outside NZ and suffer a critical condition, it will cover the cost to bring you and support person back home up to a specific limit amount.
Lifestyle Changes: With the claim money to deal with a stressful situation you can make some lifestyles change like reducing your working hours, holidays with loved ones, required necessary home modifications.
Income Replacement: With trauma cover you can look to replace your income of at least 2-3 years so if you are diagnosed with critical illness / injury there is no rush or stress of going back to work.
Dependent Care: With the lumpsum claim amount your partner can leave work to take care of you medically and spend some quality time together.
Retirement Savings: Some critical illness / injuries do not require you to go through a significant amount of financial stress as recovery time is low, however you will still get claim money which you can use for your retirement savings.

Add-on Benefits/Optional with Trauma Insurance:

These options are available as rider in your policy, and if you choose to opt it you pay additional premium for it.

Future Insurability Option: This option allows you to increase your cover by a specific amount and percentage on policy in a particular anniversary year without any financial or medical evidence.
Waiver of Premium Option: If you choose this option, you do not have to pay premium on your policy and keep cover running if due to any sickness or injury you are unable to work. This cover has a waiting/stand down period starting from 4 weeks and payment term of up to 70 years of age.
Premium Conversion Facility: This option is a gem feature and allows you to fix your premium till a certain age starting from 5 years till age 100. Trauma cover is available on three premium structure Rate to age/Stepped, Hybrid and Level.
1) Rate to Age Option: With this option policy premiums increase each year and after a certain age the premium can become so high that the policy may become too unaffordable to keep. Premium on this policy begins with a lower value but increases every year. This type of structure is suitable if you want to keep trauma cover for a short term only like to only cover your mortgage term.
2) Level Term Option: With this option cover premiums do not increase each year and are fixed till selected age. Common age option available currently are 10 Years, age 65, age 70 and age 80 & 100 (options available only for accelerated type). This option is suitable if you want to keep your policy for the long term, this allows you to do budgeting and you to know exactly the amount of cover you are paying what premium for. Premium for this structure begins with a higher amount but is a better option over rate to age for most age groups as it saves you a lot in terms of accumulated premiums. Trauma cover level premiums are not guaranteed and can be increased by Insurance Provider at their discretion.
3) Hybrid: With this option you can keep your cover partially on rate to age and level. This is a suggested option so that you are not over paying on your insurance premiums and can plan out what covers to keep till what age.

How to Claim:

– Inform you broker or insurance company immediately, even if you are in doubt about claimable event do not hesitate and place your query.
– Insurance company will require a signed and filled claim form with associated medical report to assess claim eligibility.

Additional Benefits with Trauma Insurance:

These options are built in your policy, and you don’t pay any additional premium on it.

Children’s Free Trauma cover: With this option you can have trauma cover for kids at no cost till they are 21 years old, when kids are 21 years old, they are given the option to carry the cover on their own individual policy without needing medical underwriting. Normally the limit for maximum sum insured for kids’ free trauma cover is $50K depending on insurance provider.
Parents Grieving Benefit: It is a very sad and traumatic situation when someone loses their child but in the end you must build your strength and carry yourself forward for your other loved ones, this option can provide you a lumpsum amount of around $5k to $15k. This is different for each insurer and situation if you lose one of your children (under the age of 18). You can use the payment to manage your day-to-day expenses while still mourning for the loss.
Special Events Increase Option: This option allows you to increase your cover without any medical underwriting for a specific amount and percentage in case of any eligible special event. Common eligible special event conditions are as below:
1) Taking or increasing Mortgage
2) Salary Hike
3) Getting married or divorced
4) Childbirth
5) Reaching a specific policy anniversary year
6)Children going for tertiary Education
Financial and Legal Advice Benefit: Insurance company can reimburse you financial planning benefit with a professional at the event of claim, generally amount is in between $1k to $3k specific to insurance provider.
Counselling Benefit: Insurance company can reimburse you a counselling benefit with a psychiatrist or psychologist if required at the event of claim, generally amount is between $1k to $3k specific to insurance provider.
Premium Holiday Option: This option allows you to not pay your premium on policy for a specific period normally 3 to 12 months different to insurer if you are facing any financial constraint, like parental/maternity leave, redundancy, business/income loss.

Available Trauma Insurance Options:

Advanced Cover: There are lot of trauma cover options available currently which are far superior to basic trauma cover available, the difference lies between claim definition eligibility and claiming multiple times on related or unrelated conditions.
Early Trauma Cover Option: This option taken in combination with trauma cover allows you to be eligible for claim conditions which are not severe enough to be claimable for standalone trauma cover. This normally pays partial payment of chosen cover amount.
Early-Stage Cancer Option: This option taken in combination with trauma cover allows you to be eligible for specific cancer claim conditions which are not severe enough to be claimable for standalone trauma cover.

Other Important Consideration before taking out the cover:

Worldwide Cover: Please check the cover which you are going for comes with worldwide coverage so that if you decide to move to any other country in the future, you can still retain the policy.
Stand down Period: Normally 90 days standdown period applied from policy commencement or application date. General exclusion as mentioned in the schedule by Insurer.
Eligibility Definition: All insurance providers have their own definitions pertaining to critical illness, this defines whether it is a claimable event as well as if the payment would be full or partial. This is important criteria before selecting your cover type, insurer and add-on options
Financial Strengths of Insurer: Financial strength or rating of an insurance company is quite important, the better the rating the better the assurance it provides you in terms of financial stability and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contractual obligations. You can check ratings on Standard & Poor’s, A.M. Best Co. It goes from excellent to Poor AAA being the highest and D being the lowest.
Listed Built in and Optional Benefits: As mentioned above your policy ideally should have all the explained benefits as built in or optional, if your policy does not have it this means it is inferior to available options and you should review it immediately.
Medical Financial Disclosure: Medical and financial disclosure is crucial for your policy and any intended or non-intended non-disclosure can lead to a claim decline. You should disclose everything in terms of your medical history till your covers are in place.
Will & Ownerships: It is advisable to place your policy in your will and mention how the amount would be distributed amongst your loved ones so that there is no dispute at the time of claim. Policy ownerships are quite important, and you should not have single ownership/beneficiary on policy as it will create a hassle at the time of claim.

Why Choose Global Finance:

• Global Financial Services has been in the industry since 1999 working in the best interest of customers.
• Our insurance advisers are highly qualified accredited and experienced, our advisers are salary based and they only do need based recommendations, so you know you are in good hands.
• We help customers at all stages like, claims assistance, loading or exclusion review & policy servicing.
• We do an annual review for all our customers so every year covers can be assessed based on current needs.
• We assist you and your loved ones while you are there and in your absence.
• Our services are free of charges, please read our disclosure available for full information
• Our services start from need assessment and goes for a lifetime. We walk alongside you for your entire insurance journey.
• Global Financial Services is the most awarded and renowned broker.
• We also aid clients whose policies have not been originated by us.

So, what are you waiting for? In the end it does matter!! Reach our life insurance broker immediately to assist in your insurance journey.