Homepage LifeDeal newsroom

Do I need Trauma Insurance?

Announcement posted by LifeDeal 08 Apr 2015

While many Australians have opted for insurance policies such as life insurance, total and permanent disability insurance and even income protection insurance; very few people around the continent have opted for trauma insurance.

Trauma Insurance ( http://www.lifedeal.com.au/trauma-insurance/ ) - It is the little known type of insurance in this industrial domain that lurks in the background avoiding the spotlight. But did you know that trauma insurance actually works in sync with your other insurance policies?

What is Trauma Insurance?

Is often termed as the ‘insurance for the living’, though is more commonly known as ‘critical illness insurance’. This type of insurance provides a lump sum benefit in the event that you should suffer an illness or in some policies, injury, that is specified within the policy.

This type of insurance is paid to you as a lump sum on the diagnosis of the specified illness or the illnesses which are chronic. Majority of the times, recipients use the payment to fund additional medical expenses including those which are not covered by your medical insurance, lifestyle changes such as making improvements to your household, a medical career or nurse to help provide support for you at home or even to pay off debts or cover repayments.

Because the benefit is a lump sum, it can provide flexibility to spend on expenses above your normal monthly wage, if you combine your trauma insurance with an income protection policy.

Types of Illness Included

There are many different types of illnesses that could be covered under a trauma insurance policy, but the most common are stroke, heart attack and cancer. It is worth closely reading this section of your trauma insurance policy so that you understand what illnesses are covered under your plan. Some insurers will allow you to add specific illnesses to the list but this will affect the amount of premium that is due.

Why Is Trauma Often Forgotten?

Australians tend to neglect trauma insurance because it lacks the prominent profile of other types of insurance. This is probably because life insurance ( www.lifedeal.com.au ), total and permanent disability (TPD) insurance and income protection insurance ( www.incomeprotectioninsuranceau.com.au ) are all benefits that can be easily obtained within your superannuation and given superannuation is compulsory in Australia it provides the perfect vehicle from which you can ‘set and forget’ your insurance premiums.

Trauma insurance in superannuation is not common and there it is debatable whether it will continue to be offered at all. The reason is not offered by superannuation funds is because it is not a tax deductible benefit for the Fund Trustee, thereby negating one of the key benefits of insurance in superannuation, plus there are questions in relation to whether having insurance in superannuation will breach ‘the sole purpose test’. The sole purpose test provides that the primary purpose of superannuation is to supply for Australian’s within their retirement, and trauma is a benefit for the living. Finally, there are also questions about how a superannuation fund would go about making a trauma benefit payment. Because trauma is a lump sum benefit (unlike income protection), it would need to satisfy a condition of release and to date trauma illnesses are not included in this list.

Getting Trauma Insurance

Most of the Australians are put off seeking out this type of insurance because they do not understand the importance of it, think it will be expensive and feel like the whole effort of getting a financial plan, with many appointments and fact finding is just not worth the investment of their time. But it does not need to be any of these things.

You can now get an online trauma insurance quote quickly and efficiently through from an online insurance broker. In addition they can provide you with quotes for a number of Australian trauma and health insurance providers in just a few minutes.