What’s the difference between Insurance through Super or a Broker?
Many superannuation providers include an automatic (and auto-calculated) life insurance and TPD insurance as part of their service. These policies are not underwritten, meaning lifestyle and medical questions are not asked, and the biggest disadvantage is they are typically a low level of cover, calculated on your current salary / age / averages. Before you start your insurance application with a broker, you should investigate your superannuation and understand any existing policies, and whether they are underwritten or not.
Underwriting an insurance policy is required to enable the providers to assess any existing health or hobby-related activity, which may impact your policy, require an exclusion to be included in your policy, or possibly increase your premium. If you have not specifically requested for your Super fund to underwrite your policies, they will not be, and may have strict exclusions / conditions, based on ‘typical’ / base assumptions. It is worth investigating the policies through these automatic covers, and confirm you are comfortable with the amount provided. If you wish to increase the cover, the super fund will likely start the underwriting process to do so.
Many super funds will also default to only life insurance and TPD, they will not (and in many cases, cannot) provide income insurance, or trauma insurance. Should you wish to set up all four types of insurance with a single provider, you will need to cancel your Super policies and set up new policies all together (to avoid paying twice), or work with an insurance broker to set up the remaining insurances with the same provider, and ask your Super to underwrite their policies in parallel.