Trauma Insurance:

Trauma insurance is useful in the unfortunate event that one of the bread winning partners or individuals dies or suffers a major medical crisis e.g: heart attack, stroke, cancer, or some other ailment.  Trauma insurance is there to cushion the loss as it is one of the most claimed upon type of insurance in our day and age.

What is it?
Life and Trauma insurance provides a lump sum payment which will enable you to pay the outstanding component of the mortgage and to meet the unforeseen costs of medical treatment, rehabilitation, funeral cost etc.

This will allow you to recover without the pressure of needing to return to work prematurely so as to meet cash flow requirements.

Why is it important to you?
This is an extremely important part of your financial planning process and offers protection for you, your family and your business. Trauma Insurance is known by many names, such as Recovery, Medical Catastrophe, Recuperator, Crisis Care, Critical Conditions etc.

Trauma Insurance can pay a lump sum benefit in the event of an accident or cancer, heart attack, stroke, or by-pass surgery.

Depending on what type of trauma policy best meets your needs, you can be covered for such events as: Angioplasty, Aplastic Anaemia, Cancer, Cardiomyopathy, Chronic Kidney Failure, Chronic Liver Failure, Coma, Coronary Artery By-pass surgery, Dementia, Encephalitis, Heart Attack, HIV-Occupationally Acquired, HIV – Medically Acquired, Major Head Trauma, Major Organ Transplant, Meningitis, Motor Neurone Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Open Heart Surgery, Paralysis, Parkinson’s Disease, Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, Severe Burns, Stroke, as well as Death (from any cause), Total & Permanent Disablement (from any cause), and Diagnosis of a Terminal Illness.

What extra benefits can be taken out?
You can also choose to have what’s known as ‘Top-Up Term’. Top-up Term is additional life cover on top of that which you may have already included in your trauma policy.

Additional benefits that you can select for most trauma policies are; Waiver of Premium, a Buy-Back option, and a Children’s Benefit.

A Waiver of Premium means that if you have a trauma policy with top-up term cover, and in the event of a claim being paid for a trauma, the remaining top-up term cover premium would be waived until the policy anniversary proceeding age 65 of the life insured, i.e. the insurance company would pay the premium for you!

If you have a trauma policy with no additional top-up term cover, and in the event of a claim being paid for trauma, you can usually re-purchase your term cover over a 3 year period (1/3rd per year for 3 years). But, if you have a Buy-Back option, you can repurchase the full amount of life cover after only 12 months.

With most trauma policies you can choose to have a children’s benefit included in your policy. This benefit varies from company to company, but usually the child or children will be covered for the same events as yourself (except for death), and the same sum insured. This important benefit can be from as little as $5 per month.

Important disclosure
All information included on this site is Life Insurance Advisory Service of Australia’s interpretation only, and for exact definitions, the individual insurance companies customer information brochure should be referred to at all times.

How can we help you?
Trauma policies can vary greatly between insurance companies, so when comparing policies be sure to look for things such as: does this policy include a death benefit, or a Total & Permanent Disablement benefit.

Other great variations can be in the policies definitions, such as for a heart attack, which would you prefer: elevation of cardiac enzymes twice the standard level, or an increase of cardiac enzymes above normal?  We can help you to work out what will be the best for you.

Please contact us if you would like more information and we can offer you a free two hour no obligation appointment.

Prepared by John Hehir – Financial Advisers Australia (FAA)