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.
