Is protecting retirement provision a life adviser’s duty? Part two.

In this second part on the topic, I’ll explore a couple of issues to consider when giving advice on temporary disability risk and insurance (income protection, mortgage repayment covers and waiver of premium) that pays monthly benefits. There may be others.

Protecting retirement with monthly disability covers

Income protection policies can take care of disabled clients reasonably well during their working lives – up until they reach age 65 or age 70 anyway (as long as they have benefit payment terms that will pay for that long.  Shorter, two and five year benefit payment terms may dessert disabled clients long before retirement). 

However, income protection policies are not designed to protect disabled people in their retirement years. (At least one product I’m aware of has an option to continue paying benefits in retirement but this requires the client to be so severely disabled that they cannot perform basic activities of daily living without assistance – relatively few clients will qualify but that doesn’t mean this benefit shouldn’t be considered).