You’re looking for insurance cover, be it for your life, home, income or health. You have two choices. You can use an insurance advisor to do all the hard work for you, or you could purchase straight from the insurer's website. Which one will you pick?

Obviously, we recommend that you use an insurance advisor and today we’re explaining the five most important reasons why.

Yes, you've heard it before, you should have medical insurance and income protection. Well here's a story of exactly why you need to consider insurance cover.

Your life may depend on it.

We have a client who has had ongoing issues with immunity for some time. They have the cover and have been able to access treatment in a reasonably timely way.

Having been around business for over 20 years working either on the coal face of businesses or managing aspects of companies, we have accumulated plenty of experience navigating the market.

One thing that is coming clear is it isn't often the quality of staff or even the stability of a business that dictates when a company might restructure and lay off a whole bunch of staff, or even just one person.

With this, we have a feel for what goes on with job ebbs and flows, and we are entering a cycle where the likelihood of disruption that forces job changes on people is higher than what we would consider normal.

Right oh, if you are reading this from the perspective of trying to claim, we might be a bit shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Though there may still be things we can do, so do check out our claims advocation service. Where we can we help people get the support they need from what is available.

For those who are looking for life insurance and wanting to find the best deal on life insurance, this is the starting point. Knowing what you don’t know that can hurt you.

The best deal in life insurance is a policy that responds and works when it is needed, not the premium you pay. Because paying a cheap premium doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right cover. Nor does it guarantee you put it in place correctly.

In the last few years, it has come to my attention that ACC's approach to weekly compensation claims for self-employed people is somewhat challenged.

This has been highlighted directly with a couple of situations with another colleague of mine and an ACC claim I have lodged myself.

There is a combination of lack of intuitive interface design by those involved with making ACC's system and the understanding of the medical people that use it.

Stress. We live with it and many of us can’t live without it. It has that canny ability to follow us wherever we go. Work, home or school, stress builds a kind of tower, adding one more bit on the top until it gets so high it falls over. Then when that happens, we start suffering the effects of poor physical and mental health. That’s often the time when we decide it’s time to de-stress.

If you are full time self-employed and you have not restructured your ACC, you are a bloody numpty

Yes, I called you a numpty! There's a reason for this.

As a self-employed person when it comes to accident injuries you have to prove your income to get weekly compensation paid.

Insurance adviser or insurance broker, what’s in a title?

Quite a bit actually. “Are you an insurance broker?” is a very common question. Yes, sort of, is the answer.

That’s because, under the regulations we have, we’re insurance advisers, not insurance brokers.

What’s the difference?

I’ve said for many years Kiwi’s love being self-employed, and we seem to switch between employed and self-employed a lot. Some succeed, some have a change of direction, some it’s about a change of situation. The point is, change is inevitable.

What will surprise you; typically, there are over 45,000 start-up businesses each year in New Zealand. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that a large number of these businesses are registered with the Companies Office early in the new year. Unfortunately, a lot of these businesses will simply fail due to cash-flow constraints. Some will be because the business isn’t sustainable, but the more likely reason is someone got injured or was prevented from working due to a disability.

In basic terms, income protection insurance in New Zealand replaces a percentage of your income when you cannot work in your own occupation for a medical or injury reason. 

It is designed to provide 75-80% of your in the hand earnings to you when disabled at claim time.

Most policies today have a range of options and different flavours. Fundamentally there are two types, those you pay tax on at claim time and those you do not. 

Having spent 15 years in the industry and during that time I've worked on a significant number of difficult income protection claims. I still don't understand why the indemnity first approach for income protection still prevails with the majority of advisers in today's environment.

Well I do; it's not the client first approach we'd all like to expect, advisers have to do less and get paid more, but that's another story here.

I work but don't get paid; the insurance company won't insure me.

This is probably right for disability related benefits. Not to take away from what you do, lots of people valuable to our community do essential things but don't get paid for it, mothers and volunteers tend to top that list.

One of the factors with this is that insurance companies insure for financial loss; with unpaid occupations this is hard to quantify.

As a home based worker, insuring your income can be a bit of a challenge in some situations.

The question is what do you do and how mobile do you have to be to do it? 

To be clear, I'm talking about those people who earn an income rather than those who are in unpaid occupations. The later is another article.

I'll be exploring a few situations and the insurance approach for paid home based workers, to give you a bit of an idea about how you can protect your income if you work from home.

Self-employed? Yup.

Sick of hearing about ACC and health and safety? Yup!

Ok sorry I've got news for you, neither is going away in a hurry. Actually the health and safety bit is going to get worse. I'll talk more about that in another post, as there's a few things going on in the background I'm looking at for clients.

Back to the self-employed and ACC thing.

Offsets are one of the most contentious and least understood provisions of an Income Protection contract with policy holders.

Why?

Simply it's not a selling point so it's glossed over in the advice discussion.

Keep in mind, having some cover is better than no cover, but having the right cover is even better.

I'm going to explore offsets in this article so you have a better understanding of what this may mean to you.