When it’s Funeral Insurance Cover… so we’re told.

Six months ago, Pinnacle Life launched a $15,000 funeral insurance policy. But clearly, $15,000 is not enough.

Seems that by the time you’ve footed the bill for the burial, the stone and the unpaid credit cards and then the wake or Hangi, $15,000 of funeral insurance doesn’t touch sides for some families.

Well, now this is a problem solved.

Pinnacle Life’s now launched an enhanced Funeral Cover policy that allows you to select the cover you want – $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 at the click of a mouse.

No room for excuses now… just go online and buy funeral cover up to $20,000 in less than 10 minutes.

Pinnacle Life has increased its electronic underwriting limits by 25% enabling it to offer life cover or mortgage cover up to $1million instantly online.    

Pinnacle Life first launched its instant, online life insurance with electronic underwriting in May 2007 with a limit of $500,000 and increased this limit to $800,000 in January this year. 

Today’s increase lifts the previous limit by 25%, enabling consumers to get $1million cover instantly online, without a medical… and appealing to a broader audience than ever before.

Websites are now two-a-penny offering ‘calculators’ that enable you to work out the amount of life insurance cover you need.     

But check under the hood for a ‘disclaimer’ saying the people operating the website are not responsible if you use their calculator and get burned…  Some disclaimers go even further saying you can’t rely on any of the information presented on their website while buying life insurance… nothing’s guaranteed!    

We wondered about the true value of providing an insurance calculator or indeed a life insurance website on this basis.   We think website operators should be willing to stand 100% behind the information, tools and services they provide… no weasel clauses! J  

PINNACLE LIFE doesn’t provide advice on its website, but you can be sure we’ll stand behind everything that is presented on it… no iff’s, no but’s, no weaseling out of our obligations.   

And just by the way, here’s the caffine calculator we ran on a previous blog… the authors of this blog stand 100% behind it also!!  

We received this from Mark Weiss of ezinsurance.com.au and thought it useful to post it. 

“The key is to find an amount that neither leaves your family underinsured nor wastes money by purchasing too much coverage. In order to determine the optimal level of life insurance coverage it is important to consider which family members should be covered and how much support they will need in the event of your early demise. 

Adult children living comfortably on their own will likely not need such largesse, while minor children with years of schooling and support ahead of them may need a great deal of support. Likewise a working spouse with a good income will need less financial support than a non-working spouse with a houseful of kids to take care of. It is important to take these matters into consideration in order to come up with the right size death benefit. 

The amounts of any home mortgages or home equity loans is an important factor as well. In fact many people purchase term life insurance coverage equal to the outstanding amount of the mortgage, for the express purpose of paying that mortgage off in the event of the death of the policyholder. This can be an excellent and cost effective strategy for homeowners, and the amount of coverage can be adjusted as the balance remaining on the mortgage goes down.”  

Thanks for this Mark.

Part of the job of a financial adviser is to help an applicant for life insurance work out how much life insurance they need. But here’s the issue… after an applicant’s ‘needs’ are calculated to several decimal places, do you know how much life insurance they end up actually buying?  

Here’s the problem for most people.  Their insurance needs are not just life insurance, they are also for medical insurance, trauma insurance, income protection insurance, house and contents insurance and car insurance. That’s a lot of insurance. So it often comes down to where your priorities lie and after considering all your insurances, how much of each you can actually afford.

For anyone looking for some help in calculating their life insurance needs, there are many ‘calculators’ available that you can plug in your details and the calculator will give you a number to use as a guideline.

Here is one of them… see calculator

Simply put, if you don’t have anyone that’s financially dependent on you – life insurance probably isn’t for you.

Life insurance exists to provide your dependents with a financial “cushion” that will see them through in the period after your death and for some time afterwards.

To help figure out how much cover you need the Consumers’ Institute recommends that, as a minimum, life insurance should cover your debts, funeral expenses, full repayment of your mortgage and your family’s immediate living costs.

In the real world, for most of us it will come down to what we can afford to pay – when this is the case, some cover is always better than none.

Once you have your figure, buying your policy should be straight forward.

My advice is to think carefully about what you really need. Don’t be bullied into buying a product you dont need. And don’t be pushed into buying more than you need. Keep it simple and make sure you understand what you’re buying.