For many New Zealand households, the cost of pretty much everything has increased in recent years.

Although inflation has now returned to the Reserve Bank’s target range, the cost of living remains significantly higher than pre-Covid, for a lot of people.

If your household has been feeling the squeeze, you may be wondering about your insurance.

Here are a few important things to think about if you’re considering making adjustments to your cover.

Don’t be too hasty

It’s important not to jump to thinking about giving up insurance cover, or substantially reducing it, until you’ve looked at every available option.

Even if you’ve never made a claim on your insurance, it is providing vital protection for you and your family. And if you’re in tighter financial times, it can be all the more important to maintain that safety net.

If you couldn’t afford to get by without your current level of income, for example, that makes insuring that income all the more important.

Once you give up an insurance policy, it can sometimes be hard to get the cover back on the same terms. For that reason, any changes to your cover should be made carefully.

As advisers, we can help you to work out what cover you have in place and what protection you need. We can also advise on whether there might be more efficient ways to structure your insurance.

There are ways to reduce your premiums

There are many ways that you may be able to reduce your premiums without leaving yourself exposed to undue risk.

We can help you work through the options, which may include opting for a bigger excess on some of your policies, a longer standdown period until a claim starts to be paid on your income protection policy, or perhaps even reducing the length of time that such a claim might be paid for.

Other options may include declining an inflation adjustment for the year or investigating whether your policy has inbuilt flexibility to allow it to be adjusted. We may be able to compare your cover to other policies to determine whether a more affordable option is available.

There are a number of adjustments that could be made, and we can help you look at which might be appropriate for your situation.

If you are in serious financial hardship, there may be additional measures that we can help you to access.

If you are making changes to your cover, that may affect the suitability of your cover if you need to claim. As your advisers, we can help you to take into account your situation and objectives and ensure that your protection remains fit-for-purpose, and that you understand the impact of changes you might consider.

We can help

If you’re expecting tough times ahead, or just wondering about ways to ease the pressure on your household budget right now, it may well be that the earlier you take action, the better.

Your SHARE adviser can help with any questions you may have about your cover, and how you could adjust your premiums – either temporarily or for the longer term. Give us a call on 0508 2 SHARE (0508 274 273) and tap into the wealth of advice our professional advisers can offer.

Disclaimer: Please note that the content provided in this article is intended as an overview and as general information only. While care is taken to ensure accuracy and reliability, the information provided is subject to continuous change and may not reflect current developments or address your situation. Before making any decisions based on the information provided in this article, please use your discretion and seek independent guidance.