We don’t always know how things are going to pan out. Life changes, we all know that. Which is why at Pinnacle Life we try to make it easy to make changes to your Life Insurance policy (or any other policy you have with us. So if you need to make changes to your cover you can, whenever you need to.
It’s important that your life insurance stays up to date so that if you need to make a claim everything goes smoothly. If the time comes to make a claim, it’s because the worst has happened, which will be stressful and emotional. Help us to help you and make sure your policy is up to date before you need it.
The 7 top things to keep up to date are:
1. The policy owner
Only the policy owner can make changes to the policy, for instance changing the amount of cover or cancelling the policy. And, only the policy owner can tell us who can and cannot talk to us about their policy. Which is why it’s important that you know who the owner of your policy is and change it if necessary. (For more information about Policy Owners see our previous blog.)
When you take out a policy with us the policy owner is the same person as the life insured. To change the owner you’ll need to fill in our change of ownership form.
2. The beneficiary
The beneficiary is the person who receives the pay out of any claim. If you have a Life Cover policy, then the policy owner is automatically the beneficiary, so if you want to change the beneficiary simply change the owner.
If you have Funeral Cover, Mortgage Cover or Income Protection it’s just as easy but you will need to give us more details.
3. Your level of cover
By adjusting the level, or type of cover you have, you can be sure you’ll have the right support if you need to claim on your policy.
For life cover, if you recently married or divorced, became a parent, or took out a mortgage, you might be eligible for our special events increase. Otherwise, to increase your cover, we’ll usually just have to ask you for updated health details but it’s usually a straight forward process, just like when you first took out your policy.
To reduce your cover just send us a request. The easiest way to do this is to request a quote or by calling us.
4. Your contact details
This includes your phone, email and your address. You can do this on our website, simply fill in the details and press submit, or give us a call on 0800222223 or +6495225515.
5. Your payment details
If you change any details on the account you pay from, we need to know so that there’s no problems with your payment. The easiest way to pay is by direct debit but we also accept credit cards. If you’d like to talk about other options for payment, give us a call.
6. Your name
If your name has changed let us know because it will make things easier if you need to claim. For example for a claim we need proof of identity, if the name is different from the identification we receive it makes things complicated.
7.Whether you still smoke
Make sure you tell us if you’ve given up smoking for more than 12 months (if your policy document says you’re a smoker) because after 12-24 months (depending on your policy) you can be classed as a non-smoker and your premiums will decrease to non-smoker premiums. You’ll need to complete a form to let us know.
Most of these changes only take a moment and can be done online. If we need you to send something in it’s usually because we can’t accept electronic signatures, we only do this if we have no choice!
