Help with Life Insurance

Life insurance takes care of the ones you leave behind. It is there to ensure that when you pass away, your loved ones will receive a tax-free, lump-sum payment of money.

The purpose of Life Insurance is to relieve your loved ones of any financial burden when you die. When you take out your policy and are deciding how much cover you need, consider how much debt you have and what you don't want your family to have to deal with. That might include things like a mortgage, funeral expenses, rent, schools fees and more.

There are a number of factors that affect the premiums you can expect to pay on your life insurance. These are tailored according to your age, gender and smoking status and can also be affected by your health and lifestyle.

Life insurance is usually paid out upon your death. However, you can also get it paid out early if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness leaving you with only 6-12 months (depending on your policy) or less to live.

When choosing your Life Insurance start by choosing a provider that you trust. Then compare prices and any extra cover that you want, for example, Critical Conditions or Disability Cover. Life insurance premiums increase over time as you age and to keep up with inflation (you can turn this off at any time). It’s up to you to choose the lump-sum amount of your life insurance when you first take it out. If you get stuck our customer service team at Pinnacle Life are able to help you make the best decision for you or try our free advice tool.

Income protection insurance takes care of you and your family if you become temporarily unable to work due to an accident, illness, or injury. It means you receive a monthly payment to account for your loss of earnings to ensure that life’s necessities can be paid for as usual until you’ve recovered.

Income protection insurance covers you for sickness, as well as accidents or injury that prevents you from working. ACC does not cover you for illness, so income protection insurance can be a great option to cover your bases.

Statistics show that the most common reason New Zealanders are unable to work for an extended period of time is due to illness. ACC will only cover you for an accident or injury in this instance. Make sure you’ve got the cover that you need with income protection insurance from Pinnacle Life.

If you are unable to work due to illness or injury, our income protection cover can help replace your lost income, so that the bills can still be paid, and stress on the family is reduced while you recover.

In NZ we are lucky to have ACC, however, ACC doesn’t cover you when you can’t work due to sickness. Statistics show the most likely reason that you may not be able to work for an extended period of time is an illness. ACC will pay a maximum of up to 80% of your income as weekly compensation if you’re unable to work due to an injury.

The maximum cover that Pinnacle Life can provide under our Income Protection Cover is 75% of your income.

If ACC are replacing 80% of your income, your income protection cover won’t top you up to 100% however, if you are receiving less than 75% from ACC, we may be able to top you up to 75%. Any income that you receive while you are off work, whether it is from ACC, WINZ or another insurance policy, will affect our payments to you.

If you have an income protection product elsewhere already, we suggest you talk to us before taking out another policy, as you may not be able to claim on both policies. If it comes time to claim, and you receive income from other sources eg ACC or another government agency, this will be offset against your income protection payments.

Disability insurance is an advance payment of life cover, paid out if you were to suffer an accident, illness or injury that resulted in your total and permanent disability. TPD insurance allows you to move forward with your life and account for any extra costs, including modifications to your home and care assistance.

If you were to become permanently unable to work due to an illness, accident or injury, you may be eligible to receive a disability insurance lump-sum payment. It includes some conditions, such as loss of limbs, that fall outside of our Critical Conditions cover. Take a look at our Total and Permanent Disability Definitions to see exactly what’s covered.

It’s a good idea to consider adding disability insurance to your life cover with Pinnacle Life. In this way, you’ll be covered for sudden changes in circumstances that affect your ongoing ability to work and take care of yourself, and you'll avoid a financial burden for you and your family.

The cost of disability insurance varies depending on your individual circumstances, including things like your age, gender, your health, occupation and your chosen level of cover. It’s up to you to decide the level of disability insurance coverage you want, you can choose from anywhere between $100,000 up to $1 million.

Trauma insurance covers you for specific medical conditions. Once diagnosed, you may be eligible to receive a tax-free, lump-sum payment that can be used in any way you like if your ailment is one of the 38 conditions covered by our policy. Help to fund your care or to look after your family members, trauma insurance is there to help you during difficult times. You can only buy it alongside life cover, you can’t buy it as a seperate policy.

Our Financial Strength is important becuase it lets you know whether you can rely on us to be there when you need us. We are backed by Hannover Life Re of Australasia, and have been since we started business in 1998. Hannover Life Re is a member of the Hannover Re reinsurance group of companies, with whom all our reinsurance is currently placed. Hannover Re has a very strong financial strength rating, being rated by Standard & Poor’s as AA- “Very Strong” and A.M. Best as A “Excellent”.

Pinnacle Life is a licenced life insurer, our policies are not underwritten by any other company. Our policies are reinsured with Hannover Life Re of Australasia as part of our prudent financial management.

You can find our terms and conditions here and our privacy and security policy here.

For Life Insurance

• if you apply online you can get cover from $100,000 to $1,500,000.
• If you’d like to apply for cover of under $100,000 or up to $2 million contact our office (there will be some extra medical check requirements for the higher cover levels).

For income protection cover

• we offer cover of up to a maximum of $12k per month (before tax income).

We offer cover to people aged between 18 and 75. Specifically, the age limits are:

For Life Insurance

• you can apply online if you are aged 20-69
  
• or by talking to us if you are 18-75.
• You can be living in NZ, Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Hong Kong or Singapore.

For Income Protection

• you can apply if you are 20-59 and,
• living and working in NZ.

For Critical Conditions (note you can only apply for Critical Conditions at the same time that you apply for life insurance)

• You can apply online if you are age 20-59

For Disability Cover (note you can only apply for Disability Cover at the same time that you apply for life insurance)

• You can apply online if you are age 20-59

If you apply online for a new policy, you’ll get a 10% discount for your first year. You might also be eligible for a further 10% discount depending on your health and lifestyle.

It can depend on the kind of policy you have:

For life insurance policies, the claim is paid to,

• the policy owner or,
• if the policy owner has died, to their estate.

For a mortgage policy

• the beneficiary nominated in the policy document

For an Income Protection policy

• the beneficiary nominated in the policy document

For a Funeral policy

• the beneficiary nominated in the policy document

We have a range of tools to help you work out the right amount of cover for your needs. Go through our no-obligation online advice process to find out what we recommend for you. Or find out what level of cover others of your age and gender have asked for.

To find out more about our products, and what needs they meet, please contact us on 0800 22 22 23 or by email and we’d be happy to advise you based on your current needs and circumstances.

The owner or owners are the people

• who will receive any proceeds of a claim or if the owner is deceased, the claim will be paid to their estate. If there are two owners and one has died in most cases the proceeds of a claim will be paid to the surviving owner.
• who can authorise changes to this policy like
• reducing the cover
• changing the beneficiaries (if your policy has a beneficiary) or
• cancelling the policy. If there is more than one owner then all of the owners will need to agree to any changes.

It depends on your answers to the health and lifestyle questions that we ask to offer you cover. For many people, we can assess their information fully online, and they will have Life Insurance in less than 10 minutes.

If we can’t accept your application online immediately, we’ll be in touch to let you know the next steps.

If that means we need more information from you, then the process may take another day or two. If we need information from your GP, it will depend on how quickly your GP responds to our request. Some doctors respond within a week, and others can take two to three weeks or longer.

We do everything we can to make your application as quick and easy as we can. If you are worried your application is taking longer than it should, please get in touch by emailing us at ask@pinnaclelife.co.nz or phoning 0800 22 22 23.

No matter where you move to you will continue to be covered. You don't need to cancel or put your premiums on hold. Just let us know so that we have your current contact details.

The best thing to do is to drop us a line or give us a call on 0800 22 22 23. Every person's situation is different, and we want to make sure we do the best thing for you. Depending on your policy, you can apply to us in writing to ask us for a payment holiday for up to 12 consecutive months. This means you won’t need to make any payments, but no cover will be provided. This also means you won’t be able to claim for any condition or event that occurs or is first diagnosed during the payment holiday.

Premiums go up annually because they are based on age as well as gender, smoking status and health and lifestyle factors. They are calculated by an actuary who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty.

Statistically, a person's chance of dying at a certain age changes yearly. When you are younger, premiums can decrease each year as the chance of dying by accident reduces. Unfortunately, as you age, the chance of dying increases, so premiums increase. The amount by which they increase varies from year to year.

For Life Insurance

• Yes - If you have a Life Cover policy, the policy owner will receive the money from any claim, or their estate if they have passed away. You can change the ownership of a policy at any time

For a mortgage, income protection or funeral cover policy

• Yes, any payment will be made to the nominated beneficiary unless you change who that is. You can change the beneficiary for a mortgage, income protection or funeral cover policy by using this form.

Some companies offer “level premiums” which means that for a fixed period, usually up to a specified age e.g. up to age 65, you keep paying the same amount. Pinnacle Life doesn’t offer ‘level premiums’ as a standard offer, but if you have an existing ‘level premium’ policy or quote from another company, we are happy to look to see if we can match it.

When your policy is claimable varies from policy to policy.

If you have life insurance with us you’ll be able to claim if:

• you are diagnosed with a Terminal Illness (definitions in the policy document), and
• in the event of your death.

If you have Income Protection insurance with us, you’ll be able to claim if:

• you are unable to work for a longer period than your waiting period (the period you nominated when you applied for the policy).

Other policies can be quite varied, so if you want details, please call the Pinnacle team, and we can go through your policy with you.

For most policies the claim payment will be made to the policy owner, or if the policy owner has died to their estate. For a mortgage, income protection or funeral cover policy any payment will be made to the nominated beneficiary.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing you have died unless someone tells us. That’s why it’s important that if you have cover with us, someone knows about it. To make a claim, the policy owner or someone acting for them simply needs to contact us by phone or email, we’ll then take a few details and advise all the information required for your claim.

Information about making a claim can be found here.

Pinnacle Life has paid out 95.1%* of all life insurance claims received since 1998 (*as of 14th August 2024).

Not at all. Whether you’ve been vaccinated, or not, your policy will still cover you in the event of your death or illness as per the wording in your policy document. The vaccine has been approved by Medsafe and therefore has no impact on existing policies or new applications.

If you have an existing policy with us already then yes, you are covered. Our policies have no specific exclusions for a pandemic or COVID-19 so once you have cover, if you get Covid-19 and the worst happens, you'll be covered.

The best thing to do is apply and we will ask you some questions that will help us assess your situation. Make sure you answer all the application questions truthfully, just like at any other time. As an example, our underwriting questions currently include:

Have you ever been diagnosed with a breathing or lung problem including Covid-19, asthma, emphysema, chronic obstructive airways disease, TB, cystic fibrosis or sleep apnoea?

Do you have plans to travel outside New Zealand, within the next 12 months?

Are you currently in self-isolation or quarantine due to having or being in contact with Covid-19 or any other illness?

You can also let us know at the end of your application that there are some things you can’t confirm and that you want someone to get in touch. We’ll then follow up with you. You will be covered for Covid-19 whether you take out a policy today or whether you started it 10 years ago as long as you answer truthfully.

Unfortunately, no. To make a claim for Income Protection, you need to show that you are unable to work because of an illness or injury.

Unfortunately, no. Income Protection does not cover unemployment. To make a claim for Income Protection, you need to show that you are unable to work because of an illness or injury.