{"id":26598,"date":"2014-06-25T06:07:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T20:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=26598"},"modified":"2014-06-25T06:40:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T20:40:49","slug":"australias-protection-levels-increasing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2014\/06\/25\/australias-protection-levels-increasing\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s Protection Levels Increasing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian\u2019s have taken a keener interest in life insurance over the past 12 months, and protection levels have increased substantially, according to TAL.<\/span><\/p>\n

The insurer\u2019s second annual Australian Financial Protection Index revealed a 38% jump in the overall score, up from 24.2 in 2013 to 33.5 (out of 100). The Index is used to analyse Australian\u2019s perceptions of underinsurance across the four major forms of life insurance (life, critical illness, disability and income protection).<\/p>\n

More than 1200 Australians were surveyed on the types of life insurance they held, as well as if they felt they had enough cover if they, or their partner, could no longer work. The results were modelled to calculate a score from 0 to 100, where 100 indicates that people have each form of life insurance and that they believe they have adequate coverage.<\/p>\n

Of all the demographic groups researched, Generation X (aged 35-49), higher income earners, those with children at home, those with mortgages and those who declared themselves as \u2018risk takers\u2019 scored the highest index results at around 40 out of 100.<\/p>\n

The number of people with a score of between 70 and 100 almost doubled this year, rising to 14% of the population, while the number with a score of zero dropped one third from 30% to 20%.<\/p>\n

\"TAL<\/a>
TAL Australian Financial Protection Index scores for key demographics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TAL attributed the increased interest in life insurance to improved awareness, consumers becoming more active in their financial affairs, and younger generations taking matters into their own hands via the digital world. It said that while the majority of Australians still do not believe they have enough financial protection, the gap is slowly closing.<\/p>\n

TAL Chief Customer Service and Operations Officer, Penny Coates<\/strong>, said: \u201cTake-up of life insurance has continued to increase, particularly through superannuation, but the low scores reflect that on the whole there is still a substantial gap between the level of cover that people think they need and the level of cover they actually have.<\/p>\n

The challenge for the industry is to convert awareness of the problem into action to address the issue<\/h6>\n

\u201cThe challenge for the industry is to convert awareness of the problem into action to address the issue, and the TAL Australian Financial Protection Index is a tool to help us do that.<\/p>\n

\u201c20% of people still have no life insurance and acknowledge this is not an adequate situation, which is very worrying. Even more concerning is the fact that lower income earners make up a large percentage of those who are most underinsured, yet these are the very people who can least afford the financial pressure which comes with the death, illness or injury of a member of the household.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2014 Index results are being released as part of a new initiative developed by TAL, called Voice for Life. The insurer said this initiative will better inform and educate customers and the broader community about the crucial societal role of financial protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian\u2019s have taken a keener interest in life insurance over the past 12 months, and protection levels have increased substantially, according to TAL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}