If you only view one blog on insurance statistics today, make it this one.

Coming up to June 30, everyone thinks about tax (don’t they?).

Unfortunately, it may be too late to do too much for this year (but you could try planning now for next year). More importantly, other important areas are overlooked.

There is no question that tax plays an important role in your wealth management objectives. But more important in my mind, is ensuring the security of your income. For most people, the most appropriate way to do this is via life insurance.

While life insurance is vital, it is regularly overlooked, and an area that people regularly don’t discuss.

Rather than talk about the reasons why insurance is so important, I thought instead that I would post some statistics on claim payouts for the 2011 year, courtesy of the Risk Store.

Product	Term	TPD	Trauma	Income Protection	Total
$ Paid	$1.8B	$629M	$538M	$1B	$3.9B
No. of Claims	18,197	6,930	3,169	34,056	62,353

When business expense cover is added, the totals reach $4 Billion in paid claims and 62,681 individual claims paid.

That sounds like a lot, but to me there are other issues that come to mind.

If the $4 billion dollars wasn’t funded by insurance, where else would it have come from?

How many of these people said ‘it won’t happen to me’?

These aren’t one off statistics. Over the last 6 years nearly $19 billion dollars has been paid in claims.

But with all that said, there is still one statistic that I find the most concerning. Have you guessed what it is?

The average claim is $63,528. ‘Valuing a life’ is not easy, and while something is better than nothing, my guess is for most people, receiving $63,000 on the death or serious illness or injury of a loved one would see them in significant financial hardship.