David* is a client of ours who phoned us earlier this year to ask a question about his investments.In the course of the conversation, he mentioned he’d recently fractured his leg while playing footy with his mates.“You know you can claim for that under your income protection insurance,” we said.David seemed surprised. “But I only had a week off work, and I know there’s a 30 day waiting period on my policy,” he said. “Don’t I have to be off work for at least 30 days before it kicks in?”“No, with an injury like a fracture, you can make a claim regardless of whether or not you can work,” we replied. “Plus if you were in hospital for more than 3 days, that’s another reason you’re eligible to claim.”To cut a long story short, David was paid a total of $10,000 on his income protection cover as a result of his injury.And the thing is, he may not have even realised he could do so if we’d not had this conversation.Why do we tell this story?Well it’s mainly to alert our clients to always ask, even if they doubt an injury or illness would satisfy the criteria to make a claim. In the 28 years our firm has been in business, there have been many examples of successful claims made by clients who were (pleasantly) surprised to find their insurance policy covered them for less obvious types of claims.These have included minor fractures, melanomas and a range of surgical procedures. The payouts have ranged from several thousands of dollars (typically for income protection cover) to around a quarter of a million dollars (for trauma insurance). And these are just examples when a client did not realise they had a valid claim until they were prompted by us after casually mentioning their illness or injury.
Clients of 5 Financial know that our mission is to help clients to feel clear and confident financially.An important factor in this is being well prepared financially in the event of suffering an injury or illness.Commonly, this is achieved by having quality insurances in place.In making our specific insurance recommendations, we spend a lot of time reviewing the terms offered in different policies to ensure the definitions are on the ‘generous’ end of the spectrum. We also consider the insurer, especially in relation to our experience of their claims history and customer service.And this insistence on quality has helped create a strong track record of claims success among our clients – even for injuries or illnesses that seemed less significant. To our way of thinking, the whole point of having insurance is to help you out when you need it.And we think this is only properly achieved by having good quality cover in place.If you’d like to know more about how we can help you gain the peace of mind of knowing you have the right insurance cover, please contact us today.*Name changed to protect privacy.