Southern Cross Health Society says that over 1,000 policyholders have already taken up its premium relief offer for redundancy and loss of income policies, and has stated that COVID-19 has not affected the level of cover provided on any of its products.
Nick Astwick, Southern Cross Health Society CEO, says the company has redoubled its relief benefit offerings to all its customers, and “softened” the initial eligibility requirements to reflect customers’ growing need for financial relief. He also noted that while Southern Cross does not cover for acute care, it would still cover for any potential aftereffects experienced by affected customers.
“We’re here to compliment the services provided by New Zealand’s public health system, so there’s no cover in our policies for acute care,” Astwick explained.
“Acute care is something that requires immediate attention and treatment, and we have a very good public system that takes care of that.”
“What we do say is that nothing has changed in our policies, so if someone who gets COVID-19 experiences second-order effects - if a kidney complication requires secondary care in the private system as a result of COVID, for example, they would be covered depending on benefits and eligibility,” he said.
“We don’t specifically [deal with] COVID because the private hospitals system isn’t really here to do that - it does largely elective surgeries, cancer care, etc.”
When it comes to customer support, Astwick says Southern Cross has been in conversations with its members to best determine the level of assistance they need. He says that although every case is different, there are many options that Southern Cross could potentially provide.
“We’ve doubled our relief benefits - all redundancy or loss of income policies can be put on hold for six months,” he stated.
“Customers don’t lose their perks and don’t have to pay premium, and they can reactivate their policies at any time, they just can’t claim in that period.”
“We’ve also softened on our rules and eligibility for that, which is right for the times,” be added.
“We’ve got just over 1,000 policies that have taken up the redundancy offer at the moment, and we’re in discussion with a number of groups around how we can support them with pricing, terms, etc. No case is identical, but there are a lot of options that we can consider.”
