RANZCR: Life Insurance Noble Oak

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists

Inside News March 2020

Before taking out Life or Income Protection insurance, you will naturally want to know how the cover compares to other products available. It can be difficult obtaining objective costeffective advice in relation to Life insurance.

In addition, most online comparison tools only compare price and there isn’t much about product features, let alone claims service.

Fully underwritten = greater certainty

One of the key points of confusion can centre around the difference between ’underwritten’ cover, which is assessed upfront, versus products that are not fully underwritten, where the assessment is made at the time of claim.

What is the difference?

NobleOak provides fully underwritten insurance cover. This means that we ask a number of health, occupation and lifestyle questions upfront and sometimes require medical tests and details of your medical records, to allow us to properly tailor your cover. The costs associated with these requests are usually covered by NobleOak.

This process does take slightly longer than cover that is not underwritten but results in far greater certainty about the risks we’re taking to insure you, and importantly, greater certainty for you at claim time when you may be going through a difficult time.

Competing covers that are not underwritten and assessed when you apply for cover, usually contain automatic exclusion clauses which apply to pre-existing medical conditions. In short, this means that any medical condition for which you are either currently being treated, or for which you have ever been treated by a doctor in the past, will be excluded from your policy. Death caused by any of these conditions may result in a claim being declined.

Some insurance companies will exclude all pre-existing conditions from coverage, even though you may not have had treatment over the past 20 years. This is what’s known as a total preexisting exclusion clause (PEC).

These types of policies (that are not underwritten) often result in the Life insurance company performing a more detailed review at the time of a claim arising, and this process will nearly always delay payment of the claim.

Comprehensive cover from NobleOak for RANZCR members

Find out more about NobleOak’s comprehensive Life insurance and to unlock the RANZCR member offer, visit www.nobleoak.com.au/ranzcr or call our Life insurance agents on 1300 108 490 and mention ‘RANZCR’.

*T&C’s apply, consider the PDS. AFSL 247302 ABN 85 087 648 708