You may have multiple income protection policies through different superannuation funds and standalone insurance coverage, but can you claim on all of them?

A new report has suggested widespread changes to Australian insurance products that deal with mental health conditions.

Superannuation payments are designed to setup Australians for life after work – but can you access these funds early should you need them?

When you claim on Total and Permanent Disabled (TPD) insurance as you would need to show you cannot work again. How does one go about proving they cannot work again? Is it by reference to CT Scans and MRIs, to the number of surgeries one has, the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) level, or the medical certificates as signed by the doctor?

Our client, Ms N of Koonawarra was employed in the capacity of a Manager with Coles Supermarkets when she first developed symptoms of abdominal pain and nausea in 2012. She continued working in her role despite increasing pain and discomfort. By April 2014 her symptoms had become progressively worse and she required hospitalization.

The death of a loved one is a traumatic experience, so it’s important that benefits claims are made as simple as possible for these difficult times.

Gerard Malouf & Partners successfully represented a person with hip injury in a TPD insurance case at the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Our client was insured for total and permanent disablement (TPD) insurance in the amount of $500,000 which would respond in the event he became unable to return to work as a result of injury or illness.

Many TPD claims are declined for a very technical reason that the claimant was not “At Work”, alternatively called “Active Employment”, at the time of the disability. The insurer would then say the claimant is ineligible to claim under Unable to Work definitions and apply much harder Daily Activities definition. Most people would not satisfy these harder definitions.

One of the biggest concerns for casual, part-time and freelance workers is superannuation. Gig workers don’t usually fall under the Superannuation Guarantee, which means they fail to receive automatic contributions to their retirement savings through their employers.

Total and permanent disability benefits are paid out when you are deemed unlikely to ever return to the workplace. But what happens if you recover?