AIA New Zealand’s trauma insurance offering now features a lower entry age and narrowed exclusion, thanks to an opportunity identified by the Kiwi insurer during a routine review, according to chief partnership distribution officer Sharron Botica (pictured).
Lifting the lid on the life insurer’s recent enhancements, Botica told Insurance Business: “Children’s trauma cover is designed to give parents the financial flexibility to take time off work and focus on their child’s recovery.
“As part of our longstanding and ongoing commitment to helping New Zealanders live healthier, longer, better lives, we undertake regular reviews to ensure our products continue to meet our customers’ needs.
“During our latest review, we identified an opportunity to widen coverage available under our children’s benefits – in particular, to cover early childhood conditions and provide more certainty around our coverage for congenital conditions.”
Of the cover changes, Botica believes that some of the biggest include the adjusted eligibility age for the children’s benefits, down to three months.
“Up until now, coverage has kicked in at two years old,” highlighted the chief partnership distribution officer, whose camp ‘dreams’ of making New Zealand the world’s healthiest and best protected country.
Botica went on to say: “[Another big enhancement is] narrowing our congenital conditions exclusion to only exclude those congenital conditions where signs and symptoms developed before three months of age. Previously, all congenital conditions were excluded regardless of when they first appeared.”
AIA NZ also introduced a new children’s congenital conditions benefit that is designed to provide cover if a child is diagnosed with and undergoes treatment for one of eight listed congenital conditions.
“By lowering the entry age and enhancing the congenital conditions exclusion, our products better respond to more conditions, like early childhood cancers, that would previously have been excluded,” noted Botica.
“Importantly, these enhancements were automatically passed back to all of our eligible customers.”
Meanwhile, not only has AIA New Zealand enhanced its trauma insurance proposition for children but is also giving away one year’s premium to 50 people in a campaign that spans 11 different policies.
“Without doubt,” Botica told Insurance Business, “underinsurance is a real problem in this country, and we want to do everything we can to help change that. Our financial advisers are critical to this ambition, and we hope this offer will help them in their client conversations and ultimately motivate more Kiwis to get covered and protected.”
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