Willowgrove Consulting was established in January 2012 by Jon-Paul (J-P) & Satya Hale as their own business in Financial Services.

J-P and Satya enjoy travelling, the Willowgrove name comes from visiting Sausalito in San Francisco. Sausalito is Italian for small Willow Grove. Willowgrove Consulting was established to operate as a trading company initially for J-P's insurance and financial services base. With the purpose to develop sales and sales management tools as well as operate an insurance advisory service through another company J-P was associated with.

Something which is often kicked around by financial advisers is private education, sort of meaning: if something happened to you, your kids would go/move to private education from public education.

Now this may be a wish you have but the practical reality is your kids have had a significant change with the loss or disability of a parent. Why would you inflict more change on them by pulling them away from their friends and stable routine to send them to private schooling? Sounds like a great way of scarring them for life at a vulnerable time.

One simple reason; your risk situation changes. Surprisingly so. I have found many situations where what was covered and covered reasonably well, is not only months later.

For example, a new client I was talking to had a cover that was only a few months old. The situation had changed quite quickly following a relationship break up, quite a bit of debt had been taken on as a result. The life cover taken was no longer sufficient to cover this and the repayment insurance they had, now has a significant shortfall.

Another client after reviewing their situation, a month later comes back. Oh yes, by the way, we have bought an investment property and effectively doubled our mortgage. Quite a change in risk there too.

Life’s full of surprises though life cover insurance is usually a subject you do not get surprises in. Sovereign’s 2013 published causes for life claims, or rather reasons people died, makes for surprising reading.

In the graph from Sovereigns claims for the year ending 30 June 2013, The 70 plus age group isn’t surprising, cancer, heart or lungs are usual reasons people pass away. The first usually causing one of the second or third.

Stepping back from the older lives, things get a little different.