Charlie Cousins from Hooray Health & Protection talks to us about Group Life Insurance, the most underrated employee benefit but why it’s vital for small businesses to be providing it to their staff.
I’m the Director at Hooray Health & Protection and my job is to help business owners provide life insurance for their staff, now I’m not going to lie, even though it’s the product that I deal with daily… it is not the most exciting benefit to talk about.
When talking with your employees they don’t want to be thinking that if they pass away their loved ones get four times their salary, of course not, they want to talk about the fun benefits (unlimited vacation, team social events etc.) and leave the rest for others to deal with.
It’s completely understandable as humans we don’t want to think about the the unthinkable, especially if it’s death, so we bury our head in the sand and think ‘that will never happen to me’.
As employers we must ask ourselves ‘how far does my duty of care to my employees go’ and of course not being selfish but as a business owner you always need to consider ‘how will this benefit me’ which we will look at today.
Best cover available at the best price
When taking out insurance as a business you are usually entitled to more enhanced terms then on an individual basis, because the insurance company looks at the business as a whole and not each individual.
So, this means pre-existing medical conditions don’t have to be disclosed if the employee is working, the age is calculated as an average, so the younger employees bring down the average and cover is provided up to a set limit with no underwriting.
As the premium is calculated on the whole workforce, we have found several cases where it worked out a lot cheaper for the business to cover all their staff compared to when they were taking individual policies for its senior staff.
Attract and retain talent
We may be facing Brexit and all the uncertainties that go with it; however, this hasn’t affected the UK job market with UK pay growth strongest since 2008.
Businesses rely on attracting and retaining the best talent and employee benefits are vital to ensuring you’re getting the best people on board.
If business owners consider the group life market insures over 9.5 million people for death benefits covering over a trillion pounds, then a lot of the people you are looking to hire will have company paid life insurance in place.
Why would they leave a company providing them a range of benefits for one with none? That pay rise you’re offering won’t last long if they have medical conditions or aren’t 100% fit as a fiddle and must pay £90 a month for insurance.
Help when it’s needed the most
We give credit where credits due and we must say the group life insurance companies do a fantastic job when it comes to supporting employees and their families at the claim stage.
On average 98% of all submitted claims are paid and the rare declines will usually be due to eligibility, fraudulent claims or incorrect information provided at point of sale (hence why we always advise speaking to a health and protection expert).
Also, insurers provide telephone and face to face counselling as part of the cover to help employees or the family members of those covered dealing with a bereavement.
Business Benefits
If you’ve got this far, I’m sure you’re already sold, but let’s just add the cherry on the cake, of the benefit that keeps on giving, that is group life insurance.
Premiums are paid for by the employer so any premium payments can be claimed as a business expenses for corporation tax relief…Hooray.
Also, employers don’t have their premiums treated as a P11D benefit, so there is no additional tax for your staff to have to pay.
Finally, all the insurers we work with provide master trust facilities so employers don’t have to worry about paying to set up and manage trusts as they will take care of that. If the scheme must be set up on an excepted basis (due to high earners) we also work in partnership with insurers that provided excepted master trusts.
I hope this helps and if you’re considering any employee benefits for your business, Hooray Health & Protection can provide businesses solutions with life insurance, income protection, critical illness, private health insurance, international medical and provide individual protection.
Contact Charlie Cousins at charlie@hoorayinsurance.co.uk or visit www.hoorayinsurance.co.uk for more information.
