How Group Disability Insurance and Critical Insurance Can Help GTA Businesses and Employees
Life is full of expenses. Your health is an essential element to your financial well-being. A critical illness or disability can happen to anyone. Every day people are faced with the challenge of maintaining their current lifestyle after suffering from a major health issue. Disability and critical illness insurance are there to protect you from major health issues that prevent you from working. Coverage can be for either a short-term absence or a long term disability.
Most people have a life insurance policy, but not near as many opt to have a disability and critical illness insurance plan. When you took a look at the stats, protecting your income against injury or illness makes a lot of sense and is worth the investment. On average it’s estimated that 1 in 3 people will be disabled for at least 90 days at least once before they reach the age of 65. Also, it’s worth noting that many disabilities can last months and even years.
Insurance is something we purchase to protect many things in life such as the car we drive, the home we live in and even death. With something being as important as your health, it really makes sense to protect your earning potential with insurance. A bad injury or illness can make you stop working; unfortunately, your bills will keep coming.
Many employers have good intentions. They build their benefit plans to include core coverage such as a drug, dental and life insurance. They intend to add critical and disability insurance into their plan’s mix eventually but never get around to it.
There are some key differences between critical illness insurance and disability insurance. The goal of disability insurance is to provide you with an income substitute in the event of a disability that prevents you from working. Critical illness provides a lump sum payment in the event of a major illness such as cancer. The insurance is paid out this way to give you control of how you’d like to spend it. Major illness can not only cause your income to lessen, it can also add more expenses to your household due to covering treatment costs. Once the money is spent, it’s gone. The two insurances work best in tandem with one another, critical illness insurance will fill the gaps left by disability coverage.
Even a short-term injury or illness can cause you and your family a lot of financial stress. Disability and critical illness insurance can help alleviate financial strain and protect your savings. The insurance will provide you and your family the help needed to maintain your lifestyle. Typically, a disability benefit will pay upwards to 60-85 percent of your average working salary. It’s important to decide if you would like to have a tax-free benefit plan or a taxable insurance. Plans can be combined, but will usually not exceed your typical earnings. Your disability and illness policy can be combined with insurance products such as credit card, mortgage, and car payment protection.
Short-term disability benefits will usually begin once you have exceeded your employer’s sick leave time. Time periods will vary greatly from plan to plan; typically insurance companies will pay out short-term insurance up to 15, 26 or 52 weeks. Without adequate short-term disability insurance, you will most likely need to utilize Employment Insurance (EI). Younger workers really benefit from having disability insurance coverage.
An extended illness or injury may require the use of long-term insurance. Your long-term insurance will kick in once you’ve exceeded the maximum amount of time on your short-term insurance or Employment Insurance. It’s worth mentioning that most long-term disability insurance policies will only pay out to a maximum dollar amount, it’s important to ensure this cap will compliment your current lifestyle. Plans will usually include funds to help you regain your ability to work and earn. Rehabilitation requirements will vary depending on the plan.
Group disability and critical illness plans are designed for everyone, regardless or your current or age. It’s estimated that 4.6 million Canadians have some form of short-term disability insurance coverage and more than 10 million people have long-term disability insurance.
At Tanner Financial Services we take a lot of pride in being able to work with GTA and Toronto companies to structure a group disability and critical illness package that make sense for both you and your employees. We partner with leading insurance providers across the country to get you the best insurance coverage for the best price.
GROUP CRITICAL ILLNESS INSURANCE
Comments are closed here.