If you have insurance within your super fund you may be paying for cover that you’ll never actually benefit from. It has recently come to light that some industry super funds have offset clauses with Life insurance (and other products). This is best explained by example. Assume David has $300,000 of Life insurance with AustralianSuper and $500,000 with CBus. If his estate claimed on the Life insurance policy with CBus (for example), it would only pay David $200,000 even though he has been paying premiums on this amount of cover ($500,000)! The reason for this is that Cbus will “offset” its cover by any benefit you have received elsewhere. In this situation, David probably thought he had $800,000 of total Life cover. However, he really only had $500,000 because of the “offset” clause.
If you have Life insurance (or any other insurance for that matter) across two or more providers, it is absolutely critical that you question the insurer about offset clauses.
Industry super funds typically offer cost-effective insurance but it is usually basic cover. This might be appropriate (particularly for Life insurance but less appropriate for income protection cover) but like many things in life, you get what you pay for. Good insurance is about getting good value for money. There’s no point paying bargain prices for cover if you have little chance of a claim being paid and you don’t necessarily need to pay top dollar either. You need to balance “cost” and “cover” to get value for money.
As a subtle (friendly) reminder, ProSolution provides insurance advisory services so if you ever need assistance with insurance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
