It’s not like buying a smartphone, a piece of furniture or groceries. When you buy insurance, you are buying a promise. It’s a promise that if something catastrophic happens to you, your insurer will pay what you determined was necessary to make your life – as much as possible – whole again.
Thought leaders have noted how the pervasive use of technology has made us less adept in confronting the unexpected. They point out that we make our life decisions with dogged devotion to efficiency, often at the expense of reason for the unexpected. The result is a woeful state of unpreparedness to respond to the “generally certain but specifically ambiguous” losses in life.
But let’s back up a moment to take a big-picture look at why insurance matters.
Insurance is an intangible which provides another intangible – peace of mind. We all live life the best we know. But we never quite know what lurks around the corner. When unexpected events unravel life, your insurance payout provides a financial buffer allowing you and your loved ones to have financial security.
Insurance is a safety net for when things go wrong. Especially once you have started a family, insurance can provide financial protection to your family should you experience premature death, disability or illness. It’s similar for a business. Should a key employee or piece of equipment go out of commission, the business can carry on – thanks to insurance.
By transferring the risk of calamities to the insurer, you can live purposely with confidence.
While most think insurance only benefits your dependents, it can also be deployed to meet your current needs. Why set aside $5 for your dependents when you can use $2 to generate $5 upon your death, thereby availing $3 for your current purposes?
We’ve seen it happen too often.
An individual waives his need for insurance waging he’ll win the lottery in a game that costs too much to lose. The unexpected happens and the current course of his life is curtailed. All that potential is never unleashed – at least in the way originally envisaged. He is burdened with a double financial whammy because he can no longer do his previous job, and his expenses have risen to accommodate an altered lifestyle. This stress inflicts a heavy toll on him and his family.
To add insult to injury, he is now totally uninsurable.
Insurance is something many don’t want to think about. But regardless of whether they think about it, the risks remain unmitigated. Insurance is an effective risk transfer instrument best used when the likelihood of a catastrophic event is low but the risk of loss is high whenever the event occurs.
It can be the safety net for new beginnings.
We represent the licensed insurers who recognise that the Financial Advisery channel is a legitimate alternative that consumers choose to work with. These include: