New online tools make arranging life insurance easy

January 23 2014

AA Life encourages people to think more carefully about the financial value they have to their families and is making it easier to do so.
A revamped website provides people with the opportunity to work out the numbers for the their current circumstances with a suite of new online tools and information.

“While the thought of passing on and leaving our loved ones behind is not something we like to think about, we never know what the future might bring.,” says Keith Meyrick, General Manager, AA Life.

“Many of us have a bit of lead time to that event, but sometimes we don’t. Unfortunately, if that happens, we’re often unprepared and our families are left to deal with the aftermath.”

Mr Meyrick says people aren’t necessarily actively avoiding sorting out their financial affairs, it’s just put in the “too hard basket” because they don’t understand it well.

A recent and comprehensive survey conducted by Massey University showed that Kiwi lives were underinsured to the tune of nearly $200 billion.

“It’s not that Kiwis don’t understand insurance, they do. We insure our cars, houses, contents and boats which are all physical things with a tangible value. We don’t want to take the financial risk of fixing or replacing one of those things.”

“But we continue to take massive financial risks because we’re not thinking ahead of the value each of us has to our families.”

Over the last year AA Life has worked closely with customers to better understand their needs and how these needs can be met online.

“In particular we have worked to identify the information and tools people need to be able to answer their questions and buy direct from us at aalife.co.nz.”

AA Life has completely redeveloped its website to help customers work out how much cover they may need and how much it will cost.

“Our site now includes a simple cover calculator to help people work out how much they may need for their family if they died. It makes you think about your funeral expenses, debts, future living and housing costs for your family, education costs for the kids and lump sums for various reasons.”

“We’ve made the application process shorter, more simple and removed the need for medical checks.

“We don’t want people to put the idea of life insurance in the too hard basket, because it really isn’t.”

ENDS

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