Partners Life is continuing to support customers feeling the financial strain brought about by the government’s raising of Covid-19 Alert Levels on Friday 14 August.
The company started its financial assistance scheme in March when the Level 4 lockdown began and continued until the country moved to Alert Level 2 in May.
Until last week the country was at Alert Level 1, but Auckland is now at Level 3 – and the rest of the country at Level 2.
Partners Life says it has so far helped more than 4,800 of its policyholders with premium holidays, which has resulted in more than $5 million in waived premiums, and more than $500,000 has been paid to policyholders during their premium holiday.
The insurer has also paid around $500,000 in renewal commissions to financial advisers for policies that are on a premium holiday.
The company says more than 70% of premium holiday customers restarted their payments before their maximum six-month holiday period expired, but says “…there remains a number of those customers whom we continue to help under the terms of our original offering”.
As a result of the higher Alert Levels – which are expected to be lowered on Wednesday 26 August – Partners Life will continue helping its financially impacted customers to retain their cover.
In a statement the firm said: “Since we closed our Covid-19 specific financial assistance offering, we have continued to provide customers with premium holiday and policy suspension benefits under the built-in terms and conditions of our policy wordings.”
The standard events that can trigger these built-in benefits, and the terms and conditions that apply to them, are available here.
Additional premium holiday trigger events
To further assist its customers who are being negatively financially impacted by the current Covid-19 economic environment, the following discretionary triggers have been added to Partners Life’s built-in premium holiday and policy suspension benefits. These discretionary triggers will apply for all customers until further notice.
- The unexpected termination of a fixed-term contract which has been continuously effective for a period of more than 5 years immediately prior to being terminated; or
- The unexpected termination of any other fixed-term contract which had at least 12 month’s left to complete at the date of termination; or
- The complete and permanent closure of a business owned by the Life Assured and in which the Life Assured was fully employed; and
- These discretionary events, as well as redundancy, which occur to the life partner of a life assured (who is not a life assured), will also be considered an event that will qualify for a premium holiday provided the life partner had been employed for more than 20 hours per week, and had been contributing at least 25% of the household income, prior to the event occurring
To apply for a premium holiday the life assured and policy owner will be required to complete a premium holiday claim form and provide evidence of the trigger event – such as a letter from employer, statutory declaration of business closure, copy of contract and correspondence confirming termination of it; etc.