Terminal Illness Insurance

Terminal Illness Insurance provides a lump sum upon diagnosis of a terminal illness or a non-survivable accident. A terminal illness can result in many unforeseen expenses, unfunded and expensive treatment costs (possibly overseas), and a desire to accelerate some life goals, achieve the ‘bucket list’, or allow for much needed time with loved ones.

Partners Life’s Terminal Illness Cover is a stand alone benefit that pays a lump sum when you are diagnosed as terminally ill with a life expectancy of less than 12 months or suffer an accident and as a result your life expectancy is less than 3 months. In both instances you must survive for 30 days following the diagnosis or accident.

We also include a Terminal Illness Advance Benefit (which pays an early payment of 30% of the Terminal Illness Cover sum insured to a maximum of $250,000), if a client is diagnosed with one of the following covered conditions:

  • Motor Neurone Disease
  • Advanced Huntington’s Disease
  • Stage 3 or 4 Exocrine Pancreatic Cancer
  • Stage 4 non-small Cell Lung Cancer
  • Stage 4 distal Oesophageal Cancer
  • Stage 4 Malignant Melanoma
  • Advanced Organ Failure

Yearly Stepped – Your premiums are based on your current age and sum insured and are adjusted each year on your policy anniversary.

If you or your family would like assistance with managing the proceeds of a Terminal Illness Cover claim, your Terminal Illness Cover provides a Financial and Legal Advice Benefit which reimburses the costs of a financial planner and/or lawyer up to a maximum of $2,500, payable in addition to your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured.

Should you or a member of your family need support during a time of loss, your Terminal Illness Cover provides a Counselling Benefit which reimburses the costs of grief counselling advice up to a maximum of $1,000 payable in addition to your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured.

Should a dependent child under the age of 18 pass away while you are covered under this Terminal Illness Cover, you will receive an automatic Funeral Support Benefit, which is payable in addition to your Terminal Illness Cover. The amount payable for children from the age of 10 up to their 18th birthday is $10,000 or $2,000 (less any other amounts payable) for children before their 10th birthday

This allows for children between the ages of 10 and 19 to convert some or all of their Terminal Illness Cover to Life Cover without any further health assessment (certain conditions apply).

Partners Life recognises there are a number of special events which can trigger a need to increase your Terminal Illness Cover. The Special Events Increase Benefit allows your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured to be increased (certain restrictions and limits apply) without further health assessment for the following special events:

  • Marriage or civil union
  • Divorce or legal separation
  • Becoming full-time carer for a dependent relative
  • Birth or adoption of a child
  • Taking out or increasing a mortgage
  • Purchasing a residential property, residential investment property, vacation home or bare residential land
  • A dependent child starting full-time tertiary study
  • An increase in annual salary
  • Death or Terminal Illness of a spouse, de facto or civil union partner
  • Every 5th policy anniversary

In addition to the increase options under the Special Events Increase Benefit and automatic inflation adjustments, you can also purchase a Future Insurability Option which allows further increases to your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured each year without further assessment (up to certain limits).

To ensure your Terminal Illness Cover can continue to deliver the same real value to you as when you first purchased it, your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured will automatically increase by inflation adjustment each year (and so will your premiums). These increases apply irrespective of any changes to your health after your Terminal Illness Cover starts.

You also have an option to set a minimum inflation rate of 5% so even when the inflation rate falls below this level your Terminal Illness Cover sum insured will still increase by 5%. You can choose to decline any increase in any given year without losing the automatic increase in following years, so you have the best of both worlds – automatic rights to increase with no obligation to do so.

Partners Life goes so much further than paying lip service to the way in which we will manage claims. Our intention to manage claims fairly and ethically, irrespective of what the law might allow us to do as a life insurer, is a legally binding promise. We have included our commitment to our claims philosophy into our policy wordings – so we are contractually obliged to behave this way – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Partners Life is passionate about sharing the value we create over time with you. Rather than solely focusing on incentivising new customers to join, we also want to reward clients who are loyal to us. Your Partners Protection Plan includes an increasing Loyalty Premium Discount over time. So you can take comfort that you will pay increasingly less for your Terminal Illness Cover than new clients to the company will. The discounts that apply start from the 2nd anniversary and increase each year by 1% until reaching 10%.

A premium holiday is available to you to provide financial relief during difficult times without losing your valuable cover. In the tragic event that you lose a spouse or child, are made redundant or bankrupt or are forced to leave work to care for a relative who has become dependent on you due to ill health, your Partners Protection Plan provides up to 6 months of free Terminal Illness Cover, while you rearrange your financial affairs. Alternatively your premiums and cover may be suspended for up to 12 months if you need temporary financial relief due to overseas travel, parental leave, extended periods of leave without pay or even if you decide to embark on some additional full-time study. At the end of the suspension period you can restart your Terminal Illness Cover without being reassessed

Partners Life guarantees to automatically apply any future enhancements we make to Terminal Illness Cover to your policy, provided there is no additional premium required for those enhancements.

Your Terminal Illness Cover is valid wherever you may be in the world.

This overview is a marketing document that highlights a number of the key features of Terminal Illness Cover. The full terms and conditions that apply to those features and to the overall Partners Protection Plan are detailed in the Terminal Illness Cover Protection Benefit Sheet and Partners Protection Plan Policy Document available from your adviser