Having life, health and/or income protection through your employer can be great, after all, you don’t have to pay the premiums. Generally you will get automatic acceptance with the large group schemes too which is a big advantage if you have pre-existing conditions. But you need to be aware of what they don’t cover and know how to keep it.

The approach of “I have something with work” just doesn’t cut it when a major medical event can have such a massive impact on you and your loved ones. You need to be aware of what you are covered for within your employer’s group scheme and where the gaps are.

Far too often we perform reviews for clients that have no idea what is included in their work scheme. It doesn’t help that their employer doesn’t either… but that’s an issue for another day.

1) Health Insurance – Are you covered for non-PHARMAC treatments?

Health Insurance is becoming increasingly popular as an employee benefit which is great considering it is one of the more expensive insurance products on the market. Common group health insurance products do not include non-PHARMAC treatments (or cover very little). Access to non-PHARMAC treatments, especially for cancer, is one of the key reasons you should seek health insurance as a claim could run up into 6 figures.

Solution - You can normally add these yourself at your own expense, but you have already saved plenty by not having to pay the premiums for the base health insurance product. AIA Cancer Care is approximately 25% the price of their full health insurance product and includes all benefits (including non-PHARMAC) but specific to Cancer Treatments. So, if you have Southern Cross’ or NIB’s base product at work you can add this up and know you are covered.

2) Income Protection – How long can a claim pay for?

Income Protection will pay you a monthly benefit (usually 75% of your salary) if a medical event means you are unable to work for an extended period of time. How long the benefit can pay for is vital to know, especially if you still have a long working life ahead of you, because a lot of the schemes we see here in Wellington can only pay for up to 2 years. If you can’t return to work again then that 2 years will go very quickly.

Solution – Get an additional policy put in place with a stand-down period (or waiting period) of 2 years. This means that your premiums will be cheap and in the event of a long-term claim your payments will continue after your employer benefit ends. Get in touch with us for advice on this.

3) Continuation – Know how to keep your cover if you leave your job?

Don’t walk away from your employee scheme when you leave the job. Not only are Health and Income insurances expensive, they also require extensive underwriting. This means when you make an application the insurer can, at their discretion, exclude claim events from your policy, or load your premiums (meaning they make it more expensive) based on your medical history or lifestyle. Generally you will have 60 days from the date you leave your employer to take up the continuation option. If you do this you can keep your cover, although you will now have to pay for it.

We never see employee insurance schemes as a hindrance when we advise clients, we use what is in place as a massive saving for the client.

If you are an employer looking to put a scheme in place, we would love to work with you. The old “set and forget” method that has become the norm isn’t good enough. We will make sure  your employees know exactly what they are covered for. This stuff really matters and you don’t want to learn this the hard way when you go to make a claim for your employee.