When COVID-10(Corona Virus) had its first few cases in Singapore, there were many questions if their policies were covered. An article was written back then to clear the doubts. Some were unhappy especially when policy holders realised their travel insurance will not cover the event if it was purchased after the travel advisory to Wuhan was issued. Policy holders who had purchased annual travel insurance or much earlier before the advisory notice was issued still get covered.
Over the past one week or so, insurance companies did their “CSR” by providing benefits to policy holders who contracted COVID-19. As to-date, there are 10 insurance companies providing this extended coverage without additional cost.
A summary of these companies was complied by Marcus Yun Long.
Some lessons learnt from this episode:
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(Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels)
Travel Insurance – A good reason to purchase your travel insurance once your trip is confirm i.e. when you had bought the tickets instead of waiting till last minute to get it online. This will avoid situations which travel advisories made prior to your trip and insurance companies voiding coverage.
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(Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels)
Diversification – Diversify your insurance portfolio with different insurance companies. Not only it cushions the impact when a particular insurance company cut bonus or fails, you also stand to benefit more in situation like this.
For example, if a policy holder had wanted a $300,000 of insurance coverage. He could had purchase it from any of the companies below or purchased from the 6 companies with $50,000 each. A payout of $300,000 will be paid in the event of a claim either $300,000 by one company or $50,000 by 6 companies.
The difference is the policy holder can claim from all these companies for COVID-19 as well.
As an Independent Financial Adviser, we are able to diversify and construct your insurance as well as investment across different service providers.
- Insured early – As mentioned in the Travel Insurance, we all know that we should get our insurance in place as soon as we can, likewise, for other policies as seen above. Some insurers may give these benefits to policy holders that purchased the policies before such incidents.
Another reason is if we happen to get contracted with COVID-19 and recovers from say pneumonia, this will be a pre-exisiting condition and will not be covered by your insurance company if you buy it now, It is the same as other medical condition and in most cases, we are healthier today than tomorrow so why wait?
My IFA@Sg 