April 30, 2009 at 11:30 am
· Filed under ALL, Announcements
Posted by Ed
Yep… our blog is two years old today J
When we launched it on 30 April 2007, this is what we said…
“The Life Insurance Blog has been created to demystify life insurance for consumers by providing insight and advice as well as generating debate and conversation about all things to do with life insurance.
Whilst life insurance is a serious business and something we all need at some point in our lives, it is essentially a simple commodity.”
(I mean, hey, you get a lump of money when you die… how simple is that?)
We also said
“This blog isn’t going to be your top entertainment site on the web BUT if you’re thinking of buying life insurance there are some things you’ll want to know.”
“When it comes to life insurance Pinnacle Life is for the consumer. We’re not here to sell you a product or extras that you may not need. We’re about cutting through the insurance mumbo jumbo, getting the price down and cutting out any middlemen that don’t add value.”
We greatly appreciate the feedback received over the past 2 years. Mostly its “keep doing what we’re doing”. So a warm thank you to all our readers for reading and contributing and to those that have bought policies from Pinnacle Life… ‘cos at the end of the day this blog’s not for us… it’s for you 
Ed and Steve
PS: Our thanks to Bullet PR who helped us design and launch this blog.
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April 29, 2009 at 10:34 pm
· Filed under ALL, Lighter side of life
Posted by Ed
Life insurance is about protecting your family if you die. Of course, that’s also what wills are for.
Moreover, with life insurance policies often running into millions of Dollars, it’s no secret that life insurance policies often represent most of the assets to be distributed by a will. So when the will ends, the fight over the insurance payout often begins!
And that’s why wills and life insurance are so closely related. Well, kind of…
As life insurers, we were especially intrigued to read about “the 10 strangest will bequests ever” on this website.
Here are some of them to whet your appetite…
· Revenge is sweet. In 1960 Samuel Bratt grasped the opportunity to get even with his wife who had never allowed him to smoke. He left her £330,000 on condition she smoked five cigars a day.
· American housewife Mary Kuhery left her husband $2.00 as long as he promised to spend at least half of it on a rope to hang himself.
· Eccentric lawyer Charles Millar left shares in his racetracks and breweries to anti-gambling and temperance supporters. And three men who were known to hate each other were given joint lifetime use of his Jamaican holiday home.
· Harold West was so worried he’d become a vampire after his death in 1972, that in his will he left strict instructions that his doctor “drive a steel stake through my heart to make sure that I am properly dead”.
· Predeceased by his wife and two daughters, John Bowman was convinced that after his death in 1891, the family would be reincarnated. So in his will he left a trust fund for the upkeep of his 21-room mansion, instructing his servants to prepare dinner every night in case he and his family were hungry when they returned. The money ran out in 1950.
Now… that’s where life insurance comes in!!!
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April 28, 2009 at 7:10 pm
· Filed under ALL, Announcements, Buying on-line, Cover - how much?, Q&A
Posted by Steve
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.
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April 9, 2009 at 8:30 pm
· Filed under ALL, How it works, Lighter side of life, Q&A
Posted by Ed
How does it make you feel when your insurance salesman ends a two hour gefuddle with you saying…
“…so I think we’ll get you a $500,000 term life policy with stepped monthly premiums, $100,000 accelerated trauma rider, CPI Indexing and premium waiver benefit…”
In my opinion, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to suffer ‘insurance rage’ if an insurance salesman throws this kind of jargon at you.
Just in case the very worst happens and you’re confronted by such an insurance salesman, don’t panic… just refer to this Blog for English translations.
And then the only ‘waiver benefit’ you’ll really need is to wave your insurance salesman goodbye, go online, and do it yourself!
Insurance jargon… English…
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Insured event
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This is the reason you’re taking out insurance. For example, if you’re taking out accident insurance then the insured event is ‘an accident’.
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Insured Person
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This is the person who is covered under the policy. If it’s a life insurance policy, then it’s the insured person’s life that’s covered.
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Sum Insured or cover amount
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This is the amount that will be paid out under the insurance policy.
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Insurance Policy
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This is what insurance people call the contract that binds the insurance company and the ‘insured person’. Why not just call it a ’contract’ or ’agreement’?? Dunno.
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Policy Owner
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This is the person that is entitled to authorise changes to the policy and is generally responsible for premium payments.
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Premiums
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These are your regular life insurance payments… typically monthly. Why the insurance industry had to invent it’s own word to replace the perfectly good word ’payment’, I’ll never know.
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Single Premium
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Sometimes insurance companies offer you the opportunity to pay your premiums as single instalment when the policy starts.
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Stepped Premiums
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Many life insurance policies have premiums that increase on a regular basis to match the risks associated with your advancing age.
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Level Premiums
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Some insurance policies have premiums that do not increase; they remain the same each year.
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Voiding a Policy
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If you are untruthful when you apply for an insurance policy or when you make a claim, the insurance company can cancel your policy as if it had never existed and without having to pay back your premiums.
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Beneficiary
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This is who the insurance company pays the proceeds of a life insurance claim to. It is usually a person, but can also be a Trust or a company.
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Rider benefits
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This term is used to describe additional insurance cover of a different type added onto a policy; for example, a disability benefit added onto a life insurance policy.
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Accelerated benefit
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Let’s say you have life cover for $100,000 and this includes an accelerated benefit of $20,000 for terminal illness. Then if the $20,000 is paid out for a terminal illness claim, the remaining life cover reduces to $80,000.
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Waiver of premiums
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Some policies have a benefit such that the life insurance company will waive your premiums in circumstances where your income is interrupted.
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CPI Indexing
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This is where the insurance company automatically ads a CPI increase to your cover amount each year to keep pace with inflation
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April 1, 2009 at 12:32 am
· Filed under ALL, Lighter side of life
Posted by Ed
Here’s a life insurance story to make your day.
Each year, John Milder who lived in Devon, England was notified by his insurance company that the policy on Betty Rose’s life was due for renewal and that because Betty had aged by another year, her premiums would need to be increased. He never thought for one minute about why Betty’s premiums went up as she aged, he simply accepted it. And each year John renewed the policy on Betty’s life.
John had taken the policy out on Betty’s life 23 years before and in the event of Betty’s demise, he was listed as the policy owner and the person to whom the proceeds of any claim would be paid out. Everything looked very straightforward and normal. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. A simple term life insurance policy that John paid for every month of every year without fail for 23 happy years.
Then one day the inevitable happened. The insurance company received a claim from a bereaved John. The claim form indicated that Betty’s ‘cause of death’ was the consequence of a severe storm but that there was the small matter of a missing death certificate. The insurance company’s claims manager went directly into overdrive, and after a thorough but relatively quick investigation got to the bottom of the problem.
Turns out, Betty Rose was a sloop… yes, a boat, incorrectly covered for 23 years under a life insurance policy! You’d have to wonder about that slick insurance agent… wouldn’t you?
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