We tend to appreciate insurance most when something goes wrong – a stolen laptop, a flooded kitchen, a mishap in the car.
Life insurance is different. You may never feel its value yourself – but the people who depend on you will. When you’re gone, they still have to carry on, and the last thing anyone wants is financial hardship on top of grief.
“I’d love to say everyone should have life insurance, but it isn’t really like that,” says Pinnacle Life Marketing GM Jane Barron. “We know some folks don’t need it, but there are many who do – and many among them who know it but haven’t yet taken the necessary steps.”
That’s because, Barron continues, life insurance is often seen as complicated and difficult to secure. “It does have a bit of a negative reputation and generally requires sharing personal information, meetings with advisors, and a generally inconvenient process.”
Pinnacle Life, she says, was established right here in New Zealand so that exactly this sort of hassle could be avoided. It was New Zealand’s first fully digital life insurer – and one of the first in the world – designed to make getting cover private, direct and simple.
Barron says you can get a quote in 30 seconds and be covered in 10 minutes. “I can actually do it in about three minutes,” she smiles. “For a first timer, if you don’t have a complex health history, about a quarter hour is what you can expect.”
Convenience, she says, really matters more than ever. “None of us wants to spend excessive hours oversharing with an advisor or anyone else, particularly if we aren’t really clear on what we’re going to get, and how much it will cost.”
For those who want help deciding how much cover to get, Pinnacle’s free Digital Advice Tool guides you step-by-step – providing personalised advice online, without needing to speak to anyone.
Attitudes to life insurance are changing, says Barron, “As a nation, we’ve moved on from the kind of uncomfortable discussions about dying and instead started thinking about the living. We’ve all been touched by unexpected deaths, enough that most of us have given some thought to the possibility of it happening to us, personally.”
That’s where the realisation really sets in. “When you’re the primary or only source of income for the family, for your children, or sometimes for your parents, well, then it hits
home. You want to provide for them even if you’re no longer there. It becomes part of your legacy.”
So why do so many of us put off what we know to be necessary?
“Part of it is just the busy-ness of everyday life. It happens; there often isn’t any urgency, even if you’ve just attended a funeral or a tangi. And then there’s something else – many folks don’t know what it will cost, what sort of cover they need, or how the process works.”
If you fall into that category, Barron says Pinnacle is for you. Having already shed some light on Pinnacle’s online self-service process (you can do that in your PJs in the middle of the night, she notes), Barron gets on to pricing.
“Asking how much does life cover cost isn’t a simple answer, because the only answer is ‘it depends’,” she says. “So, we offer an online tool as a companion to the Pinnacle website that helps answer all the important questions, so you have a clear idea before you set out to buy.”
One of the biggest misconceptions? That you need a million-dollar policy.
“The reality is simple; if you want $2-million cover, it is going to cost a lot more. The question is, is big cover really necessary? In most cases, no it isn’t. Instead, you want to at the very least maintain a status quo, so your people don’t have financial disruption on top of bereavement.”
This, she says, is an excellent yardstick on which to base financial calculations; other factors include health and demographic information, and risk factors.
Finally, Barron reiterates the ‘why’ of life insurance. “It’s not so much about you, it’s more about your kids, your dependents, if you’re not there to provide. It’s about a mindset of planting trees for shade you won’t sit under. It’s about your people being grateful for you, even after you’re gone.”
Get a quote in 30 seconds at pinnaclelife.co.nz or try the free cover calculator to see what’s right for you: advice.pinnaclelife.co.nz