How does your mortgage influence your insurance choices?
Getting adequate insurance cover is an important part of the getting-a-mortgage process – and one the bank wants taken care of before things go further. This includes life insurance, trauma insurance, income insurance and, of course, mortgage insurance.
Often when insurance advisers discuss personal insurance needs with a client we use their mortgage as a starting point – which of course is not to say it is the only factor to be taken into consideration. But your mortgage does influence the types of insurance you choose, and how much insurance cover you need to have.
Here is a breakdown of the different personal insurance types and how they relate to your mortgage.
Life insurance
The size of your mortgage is a really good place to start when deciding how much life insurance cover to get. Knowing that should something happen, those left behind do not have to worry about mortgage payments and losing their home provides significant peace of mind.
From there you need to think about your lifestyle, any debts that need to be covered and how long the beneficiary needs to be able to live on the insurance.
Income insurance and mortgage protection
There is a perception that income protection is expensive, but you don’t actually need to cover your entire income. We have written before that your greatest asset is your ability to earn an income and recommend you read that blog to grasp the importance of income protection, but in relation to your mortgage, you should also think about mortgage protection.
You cannot claim income protection and ACC at the same time – this is because the Insurance Act states that you cannot be better off on insurance than you would be if you were working.
However, mortgage protection is a subset of income protection designed to cover your mortgage repayments should you be unable to work. Importantly it has no offset clause - this means if you are unable to work you will receive your mortgage cover payments, regardless of whether you are also covered by ACC or by your income protection.
When you set up a mortgage protection plan you can choose how quickly you want the cover to start, such as four weeks, eight weeks or twelve weeks, and how long you want the cover to continue - anything from three months to the end of the cover term.
It is important to note that more providers are now offering rental cover as well which works along the same lines as mortgage cover.
Trauma Cover
Trauma cover can also be used to cover your mortgage payments. The key advantage of trauma cover is that it is a once-off pay out for a traumatic medical event (read more on our blog post here about how it works) and you can use it how you best see fit.
The main point to remember is that everyone’s circumstances are different, and sitting down with an adviser and talking about your mortgage and lifestyle will help them come up with the package to best suit your personal needs. So contact one of our advisers today to discuss getting the best insurance cover for your mortgage.