Summary
The impact of injury or illness and how that can disrupt our lives – and our entire future – is not a barbecue conversation topic we usually identify with.
Content
The impact of injury or illness and how that can disrupt our lives – and our entire future – is not a barbecue conversation topic we usually identify with.
But research by TAL, Australia’s largest life insurer, shows that stories of how financial protection helped save a friend or family in such a time of need motivated them to ensure they had their own life insurance in place.
In fact, one in five people said they had heard a story of someone close who had been saved from financial hardship by one or more types of their life cover (life, disability, critical illness and income protection1).
While those surveyed said this was not the key reason for taking out their life insurance, it was still a motivator for many, along with getting advice from professionals, partners, families and the workplace.
But the main reason given by people for taking out one or more forms of life insurance was that they simply made their own, independent decision, unprompted.
The second main reason was because financial protection cover was already part of their superannuation and it was a decision effectively made for them.
The third most popular reason for taking out life cover was being prompted by a family discussion, followed by a discussion with a financial adviser and then being motivated by a real-life story of death, illness or accident.
Nevertheless, this shows that stories of how life cover has protected someone they know from financial hardship due to illness or accident can be a reason in ensuring they themselves obtain cover.
Unfortunately, however, it often takes a tragic trigger story before people start to consider the importance of life insurance.
While life insurance often only becomes a topic of barbecue conversation when there is a personal connection to a story of someone falling on hard times, financial protection most definitely should not be a taboo topic: quite the contrary.
Interestingly, those from Generation Y (those Australians under the age of 25 years) are more likely to be independently initiating the decision to take out financial protection than any other generation.
And the research found that while almost one in five were prompted by an adviser or financial planner to consider their life cover requirements that figure rises to 26% among Gen Y, compared to just 14% for Gen X and 17% for baby boomers2 .
A financial adviser can help you explore the options best suited to your situation.
Source: TAL
1 Life cover is a collective description for the four main forms of life insurance: Life – lump sum upon death; Trauma/Illness – lump sum for defined illnesses; Disability – lump sum upon permanent and total disability; and Income Protection – regular income payment upon defined illness/disability.
2 This survey was undertaken online by Galaxy Research with 1,260 Australians, from the ages of 18–69 years old. Age, gender and region quotas were applied to the same and the dataset was weighted to national proportions.