Is Your Life Insurance Payout Actually Tax-Free?
Most Australians assume that life insurance payouts are always tax-free. While that is often true, it isn’t a universal rule. Depending on how your policy is structured—personally, through Super, or through a business—the ATO may take a significant slice of the benefit. The General Rule Generally, if you own a policy personally (outside of super) […]
Linked vs. Standalone Insurance: Don’t Get Caught Short
When setting up your Life, TPD, and Trauma insurance, you have a major structural choice: keep them separate (Standalone) or bundle them together (Linked). While bundling is often the more cost-effective route, it changes how your benefits are paid out during a claim. The “Bucket” Analogy Think of a Linked Policy as one big bucket […]
Insurance, Group vs Retail Vs Direct
When purchasing insurance policies most people are decerning in the type of insurance they are choosing. However, they are often somewhat unaware of the source they are purchasing from? Many people just figure that all companies selling insurance policies must be roughly about the same, with price being the only difference? In reality this is […]
Compliance Obligations with Self-Managed Super Funds
In 2010 the Australian government released the Cooper Review into Superannuation.One of its surprising findings was that only 13% of people with self-managed super funds held any form of life insurance. The latest figures from the Australian Taxation Bureau suggest there are currently over 475,000 SMSF’s with an average of two members. These statistics mean […]
Business Expenses Cover
If you’re a business owner, have you ever thought about the very real possibility of what would happen if you couldn’t be in attendance day to day, running your business? How long might your business be able to survive for? If you have business partners and a dedicated body of experienced staff, possibly you could […]
Understanding insurance premiums, including loadings and exclusions
Insurance premiums are quite simply the amount you pay an insurance company for your cover. The insurance company you are buying a policy or policies from will assess you, and the likelihood of you making a claim, and your premium is calculated in line with this. Even without looking at medical history, insurance premiums can […]
Super vs non-super and super-linked
There are three types of insurance policies possible to run through super: life cover, TPD (total and permanent disability), and income protection cover. Due to recent changes in the last few years, trauma insurance and also own occupation TPD are no longer able to be obtained through super. There are plusses and minuses with having […]
Stepped vs Level premiums insurance premiums
The simplest explanation of Stepped vs Level premiums is that Stepped premiums increase with age and Level premiums do not. Generally, the fixed rate Level premium option starts off higher than the Stepped option, but if you hold a Level premium policy for several years there can be substantial savings. A general rule of thumb […]
Claims
There’s a good deal of important information, you as a customer, should be aware of with regarding claiming on your insurance policy or policies. Unfortunately, many people, when taking out a policy, have a limited understanding of the ins and outs of the claiming process. Many just assume that claiming must just be a fairly […]