Death and total & permanent disability cover

AMP has shared with us this video that will talk you through insurance cover for death and total and permanent disability. You can watch the video here or read the transcription below.

Hi, I’m Martin. I’m a technical consultant for AMP Claims. With the stories I hear every day, I wish more of my friends knew about cover for death and total and permanent disability. I’m particularly thinking of a friend of mine. I’ll call him Frank. Frank is a train guard so he’s hanging out of moving trains and the like. He’s like the rest of my mates. If you put us in a room together, nobody speaks insurance. Things are changing for us. We’re all about 32. We’re just starting our families and whatnot. A few weeks ago, Frank started the most sensible conversation we’ve ever had. He’d ask me, “If I fell out of a train, am I covered?” It’s a good question. We should all ask it. I think the two types of insurance cover to look at, the first, death cover. The second is total and permanent disability cover. Death insurance is also called life insurance. It covers your death. There’s the allocated fund there to ensure that your family’s financial needs are being met if you die.

One of the first claims I ever worked on was for the lovely family who migrated to Australia, a father, mother and a son. Mum didn’t speak much English and the son was taking courses to get a job. The father was the sole provider. He worked out of the markets. Sadly, he got lung cancer and died. But he was smart and had taken out death insurance. I’ll never forget when I said to the son, “We’re going to pay the claim to your mother.” He just cried because it meant that they still have a future. Every year, 8,000 people call AMP to claim death cover for someone they’ve lost. We work to ensure that we pay every genuine claim. We pay about 99% of death claims.

Total and permanent disability or TPD is cover if you become totally and permanently disabled so that you are no longer able to work. I think TPD is equally as important as death insurance because it will cover you personally as you go through your process of rehabilitation. We pay TPD claims every day. We’ve had people who have been in car accidents and can no longer work. TPD can cover a range of occupations and a range of different levels of insurance.

We understand the importance of getting that money to the claimant as quickly as possible. The good news is that for a lot of us, you can get death and TPD covered through your super. You may even have it already. If you’re not sure, it’s worth contacting your financial planner to get some answers. You need to consider your own circumstances before deciding what insurance is right for you. The financial planner can help with that.

Back to what I told Frank, I heard someone say that we’re all three pay-checks away from the street. I don’t know if that’s strictly true. But I do know that for me, knowing that I have death and TPD cover gives me the security that if something terrible was to happen to me, my family would be adequately covered.

If you would like us to review your personal financial plan, please contact us for an initial consultation.