3 essential things you can do to safeguard your family’s future

Generally, income protection insurance provides regular income if you’re unable to work either temporarily or permanently, because of an illness or injury, provided you meet the conditions of your cover.

Age is one factor that may affect your eligibility. Most income protection policies cease when you reach age 65 – even if you are still working.

Income protection benefits might also reduce if you receive other forms of income while incapacitated. For example, with Super SA you wouldn’t be eligible to make an income protection claim while you’re receiving workers’ compensation benefits or paid leave entitlements.

It’s worthy to note that you won’t be able to claim if you’re ill or injured and still capable of doing your job. Same goes if you are fired or chose to leave your job.

To understand the ins and outs of income protection eligibility, it’s best to check the details of your cover.

Income protection will usually cover up to 75% of your lost income while you’re unable to work. Other insurers may cover a little less or a little more, so it pays to check with your insurer.

Your cover may also have other conditions which will impact on your payments. For example, if your cover has a salary cap which is lower than your actual salary, you may receive less than you’re expecting.

It’s also important to be aware of the maximum benefit period. This is how long the payments may last if you remain unable to work due to your illness or injury (you should expect payments to stop if you recover and can return to work).

Income protection within superannuation funds are generally limited to a maximum benefit period of 2 years, but income protection held outside super could be longer. Also keep in mind that payments may stop early if your employment terminates, you reach the maximum eligibility age, cancel your insurance, or die.

Your income protection may also include the payment of super contributions (at Super SA we call this Contribution Replacement Benefit). Most people may not consider this but if you’re not working, your employer is not contributing to your super which can impact your super balance later on.

Knowing how much you’re eligible to receive will help you work out if it will be enough.

This depends on the waiting period. Most income protection insurance has a 30, 60 or 90 day waiting period before paying any income protection benefits. The default waiting period for Super SA’s Triple S Income Protection Insurance is just 30 days, with the option to increase this to 90 days. Generally, the longer the waiting period, the less you pay for your cover.

When deciding on the waiting period, it pays to think about how much you have in leave entitlements and savings.

Before making any decisions you should get in touch with your super fund or insurer to confirm your waiting period. If your income protection insurance is with Triple S, log in to the member portal to view the details of your policy.

Death insurance pays a lump sum or income stream to the insured person’s elected beneficiaries when they die.

In most cases at Super SA, the insured person’s spouse (or putative spouse) will be the beneficiary, unless they nominated a legal personal representative (LPR). When an LPR is nominated, any insurance claims will be paid to the insurer member’s estate and distributed according to their Will.

TPD insurance pays a benefit if you become seriously disabled and are unlikely to work again^[1]. Or you suffer from a terminal medical condition. Having TPD insurance as well as income protection might provide more coverage to help you and your family when the unexpected happens.

This can be a tricky question for most of us. To get the right level of cover, consider calculating how much money you may need to pay for certain expenses when you die. This could include education fees for your children, the mortgage on the family home, funeral expenses, and paying off loans and other debt.