We continue to be 100% committed to our advisers, and to offering sustainable and affordable life insurance products, to help them meet their best interests duty to their clients.
We’re also looking to make further positive enhancements in the near future, so watch this space!
What changes are we making?
The key changes to Income Support Cover are outlined in the table below.
| Passive income | Removing the passive income offset. We’ll be asking an additional assets and investments question for applications for cover of $20,000 per month or more, per industry standard practice. |
| Insurable income | Allowing your clients to insure $240,000 in annual income at the maximum replacement ratio (increased from $200,000). |
| Ongoing business income | Allowing self-employed clients to cover ongoing business income which is only offset at claim, or a lower amount in anticipation of such offsets applying at claim. |
| Inactive employment | Allowing clients to be on leave, sabbatical or unemployed for up to 12 months prior to disability before being assessed under an Any Occupation definition. |
| Indexation | Removing benefit indexation and claim indexation caps when cover is in super. |
| Pre-disability income | Updating the pre-disability income definition for clients who have been on leave, sabbatical or unemployed prior to disability. |
We’ve also made some minor clarifications and updated our examples of benefit calculations throughout the PDS, to help advisers and their clients better understand how they will be assessed at claim.
What do you need to do?
These changes will be available for Income Support Cover applications submitted from Tuesday, 5 April and any enhancements will immediately be passed back to all existing Income Support Cover clients at no cost.
This means at claim, we’ll simply assess any existing Income Support Cover clients against their original PDS and the new PDS and treat their claim under the more favourable assessment.
Any existing Income Support Cover quotes will also remain available for advisers to submit after, so there’s no need to recreate quotes if they’re unable to submit before this date.
New PDS and adviser guide
The above changes will be reflected in a new NEOS Protection PDS, and Adviser Guide effective from Tuesday 5 April and available for download or ordering on our website.