More than two thirds of working Australians have some form of life insurance however only around one third are aware they have this cover according to new research covering the financial fitness and capabilities of working Australians.<\/p>\n
The research, released by Map My Plan and conducted by Newgate Research of around 1600 working Australians, found around a quarter of the survey respondents were \u2018financially unfit\u2019 \u2013 that is, they were unable to meet regular payments, carry lifestyle debt and have limited or no insurance, as well as no financial plan.<\/p>\n
Map My Plan, chief executive, Paul Feeney<\/strong> said the measure of financial fitness was based on how much control people had over their personal finances, their ability to absorb financial shock, the amount of planning that has been done for the future and how free they are to act in regards to their finances.<\/p>\n He said the \u201caverage fitness\u201d score was 114 out of a possible 200 but that 28% of respondents scored below 95 to 100, which rated them as \u2018financially unfit\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cOur research found that over 62% of working Australians do not have sufficient emergency savings, and one in ten would go immediately into debt if they lost their job. When it came to alleviating financial stress, we found that having a financial plan was crucial. Despite this, only 13% of Australians have a comprehensive financial plan, and a massive 34% have no plan at all,\u201d Feeney said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe majority of people surveyed said they did not consult a financial planner due to cost (75%) followed by the belief that financial planners are predominately focused on selling financial products, rather than developing a plan to meet their specific needs (71%).\u201d<\/p>\n Feeney also said while working Australians had engaged with insurance it was typically for their possessions, such as car, house, contents and health, instead of life or income protection cover with health insurance being the most widespread due to government policy and incentives in this area.<\/p>\n According to the survey one third of respondents had life insurance, and around a quarter have disability, accident or trauma insurance, and income protection insurance.<\/p>\n Feeney said this is at odds with the current default offering of life insurance within many superannuation funds and a range of surveys which suggest that 70% to 80% of families have some form of death or life insurance cover.<\/p>\n \u201cOur survey results indicate around one in three working Australians have life cover, which suggests there are many who are not aware that they may have this insurance in place,\u201d Feeney said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than two thirds of working Australians have some form of life insurance however only around one third are aware they have this cover according to new research covering the financial fitness and capabilities of working Australians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[4247],"class_list":{"0":"post-31649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-general","8":"category-services","9":"tag-feature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31649","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cOur research found that over 62% of working Australians do not have sufficient emergency savings… only 13% of Australians have a comprehensive financial plan, and a massive 34% have no plan at all”<\/h6>\n