You may be wondering if there is any kind of financial relief being offered by the insurance and investment companies at the moment? We are going to take you through what each of these companies is offering you, their clients, during this time.

Allan Gray

If you’re paying a monthly contribution, and wish to stop until everything’s back to normal, then it’s as simple as completing a form. No penalties for stopping.

Momentum Investments

From 10 April to 31 July 2020 Momentum are offering their Investo clients payment holiday options. Investo refers to their investment range and includes Retirement Annuities and Endowments.

• If your last 3 months’ contributions were paid and you have never taken a contribution holiday before, you will be eligible for a contribution holiday of 1-4 months.
• If you have taken a contribution holiday before and 12 months have passed since then, you will be eligible for a contribution holiday of 1-4 months (*subject to a total of 6 months).
• If you have taken contribution holiday options 1 & 2 before, you will be eligible for a third contribution holiday of 1-4 months (*subject to a total of 6 months).
• If you have never taken a contribution holiday and 12 months of your contract have passed, you are eligible for 2 contribution holidays of 1-4 months (*subject to a total of 6 months).

*During the full course of a contract, a client is entitled to six months’ contribution holidays.

Momentum Life Cover

Momentum strongly discourages clients from cancelling their Life Cover over this difficult economic time and encourages them to explore every possible option to ensure that they maintain their cover to protect them, their families and their businesses, if the worst happens.

Myriad is offering clients two options to help them cope financially:

Option 1: Reduce cover to a more affordable premium

Momentum strongly urges clients to contact their Financial Advisor to discuss the impact of this decision on their Financial Planning. Clients who decide to reduce their cover due to affordability challenges will have the opportunity to restore their cover back to original levels, but this will be subject to underwriting.

Option 2: Myriad’s Premium Pause Option (available until 30 June 2020)

Clients in extreme financial distress are therefore at risk of losing all their Life Cover benefits. Momentum is proactively taking steps to support these affected clients with an option to pause their Life Cover premiums.

What is the Premium Pause Option?

Momentum Myriad is offering a Premium Pause Option (PPO) for clients to temporarily pause their Life Cover premiums and Life Cover for three consecutive months while maintaining guaranteed.

insurability until their premiums are automatically resumed. Pausing premiums will normally result in all Life Cover being forfeited for the period that the premiums are paused. However, if clients proactively apply for the PPO between 1 April and 30 June 2020, they will get free ex gratia Life Cover, equal to 20% of their paused Life Cover benefit, during the premium pause period. The ex gratia Life Cover will apply for the duration of the premium pause period at no cost to the policyholder, funded by Momentum. This will mitigate their financial vulnerability and exposure while they explore additional funding options to resume cover on all their Life Cover benefits.

Momentum Short-Term Insurance

What options are available to you?

• Momentum is offering clients a unique once-off opportunity between 1 April and 30 June 2020, to choose to receive an early payment for a portion of their accumulated Rewarder benefit (no claims bonus) and/or their Safety Bonus.
• You would also have the option to pause your premiums, without enjoying cover for the period paused. This option will be available during and continue after the lockdown period is over. Upon reinstatement of the premium, at any point, following the pause, Momentum Short Term Insurance (MSTI) will not deem the period as a break in cover with MSTI, which otherwise might impact your risk profile. Pro-rata premiums will be charged from that day onwards and cover will be reinstated.
• An alternative ‘downscale’ option is also available. Momentum does understand that you may be under strain financially and may find it difficult to afford an increase in premium once you change the cover back to comprehensive cover. In light of this, they have undertaken the following; if this change is done within the lockdown period and you revert to the original cover within 10 working days, after the lifting of the lockdown restriction, Momentum will keep your premiums the same as they were before the change, provided that there is no material change in the risk.

Policyholders are less exposed to vehicle accident risks during the national lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and have therefore implemented additional measures to provide financial relief to clients.  In light of this, we will be adding an additional relief measure in the form of an automatic 10% premium rebate to all clients for their vehicle insurance premiums that are due in May and June 2020. We acknowledge that the lockdown would mean a decrease in vehicle claims and that we are likely to see a staggered approach for people returning to work post lockdown, which may also impact claims frequency. Please note that the rebate will automatically be applied to all vehicle insurance premiums for both personal and commercial clients. No intervention is required from you or your clients

Please consult your financial adviser and/or Momentum’s call center when considering any of the above options, as there might be financial implications to consider prior to making a final decision. Your financial adviser can also review your business, buildings, car and home content insurance and evaluate what are the most important possessions to cover and the appropriate amount to insure these for. Further financial relief may be available through the reduction of your monthly premiums, in line with your current needs.

Momentum Rewarder benefit

Clients can elect to get early access to a portion of their current accumulated Rewarder benefit, on a once-off basis between April and June 2020.

Safety Bonus

Clients can elect to get early access to 90% of their current accumulated Safety Bonus benefit, on a once-off basis between April and June 2020.

Please note: The vesting periods will reset after the election of early access for the Rewarder benefit. For the Safety Bonus, your safety bonus will reinstate following the once-off payment and start accumulating again, the value of which to be paid out at the next policy anniversary.

Hollard Life

Hollard is offering their clients two options:

Special downgrade endorsement

• Customers can reduce their cover by 50%, with a reduction in premium, according to standard business rules
• Cover will automatically reinstate 3 months later to the amount of cover before the downgrade, with no new waiting period or underwriting requirements
• Should, you, the customer, want to reinstate the cover at an earlier or later date, waiting periods or underwriting will apply
• Some qualifying terms and conditions also apply to this offer. Please contact your Financial Advisor or Hollard directly, in this regard.

 Grace period extension

• Hollard has temporarily extended their grace period, within which premiums must be paid, to 90 days.
• Cover will only cease after 90 days from when the premiums were last up to date.
• Customers have more time to catch up their missed premium and retain cover.
• The first premium for the policy will have to have been paid in order to qualify.
• Hollard will notify their customers when the grace period reverts to current rules.

Liberty Life

Liberty is letting their Lifestyle Protector customers the ability to reduce their premiums and benefits for up to six months. Clients will then be able to reinstate their cover on their policy without any further underwriting. No arrear premiums will be recovered for the period when premiums were reduced.

Discovery Insure

Option 1: Discovery Insure clients can fund their premiums from the excess funder account and

Option 2: They allow the fuel saver account discount that they’ve received over the past 6 months as a discount on the premium for May.

Car Hire Extender

Since businesses nationwide are closed, clients’ vehicle repairs will take longer than expected. As a result, clients whose cars are currently in for repairs will be able to keep their Avis hired cars for the duration of the lockdown period at no additional cost.

Discovery Insure will pause the number of car hire days during the lockdown period. Once the lockdown is lifted, clients will still have the remaining number of car hire days allocated to them, depending on whether they have chosen the 30-day or 60-day car hire benefit.

Postponement of May and June premium renewal increases. Discovery understands that some of their clients are financially strained as they have prepared themselves for the lockdown.

As a result, they have decided to postpone premium renewals for any client who has their policy anniversary in May or June. These clients will have their premium renewal increases effected in July 2020. In other words, they will have an unchanged premium for May and June and will only receive an increase in July. Discovery will make sure they communicate their premium renewal increases 30 days before the increase (1 June 2020).

Discovery Vitality

Vitality at Home: From double cash-back to boosted discounts

As we all adapt to our new normal during this stay-at-home period, Vitality is there to support you more than ever before. With Vitality at Home, you can continue to challenge yourself to get active, eat healthily and take care of your mental wellbeing.

Double cash-back with HealthyFood during the stay-at-home period

With all meals needing to be prepared at home during the lockdown at home, it’s important for you to keep eating healthily. So, Discovery Vitality is giving you double your regular cash-back on HealthyFood items at Pick n Pay or Woolworths. This means that if you are with Discovery Bank and have Vitality Health, you will be able to get up to 100% back on your healthy food purchases.

Double cash-back with HealthyCare during the stay-at-home period

Those of you with an active HealthyCare benefit will get double your regular cash-back on HealthyCare items at Clicks or Dis-Chem. This means that if you are with Discovery Bank and have Vitality Health, you will be able to get up to 75% back on your everyday personal and family care items during this stay-at-home period.

Health Banking from Discovery Bank allows you to instantly settle medical co-payments at pharmacies like Clicks and Dis-Chem, hospitals and medical service providers. This helps you skip the queues and make visits as quick as possible during this period.

Discovery Health

• If the client has a positive MSA then Discovery will allow them up to 3 months coverage without having to pay the monthly contribution
• Positive MSA means the portion of your MSA which belongs to you, In other words, any balance carried over from last year plus the first four months of this year which hasn’t already been used
• Clients also have the option to downgrade and use this positive portion to pay, BUT they won’t be allowed to upgrade and will have to wait until next year

Santam

Santam will be assisting clients with premium relief initiatives:

R135 million will be made available to provide premium relief to qualifying Santam clients in financial difficulty, both for personal lines clients and SMMEs in the Commercial and Personal, and Specialist business units. While premium relief is in place, cover will also remain in force and all valid claims will be honoured.  Priority will be given to loyal clients, who have a solid premium payment history but find themselves under financial pressure as a result of COVID-19 and the national lockdown.

OUTsurance

For clients who miss a premium and are within six months of their OUTbonus payment, the bonus will be available for use in lieu of the premiums.  Clients can also contact OUTsurance to temporarily reduce their cover, without impacting the terms of their cover.

For example, a customer who has a comprehensively insured vehicle, which is not financed, may want to temporarily reduce cover to third party fire and theft.  Although natural perils (flood, fire, hail etc) is not generally covered under third party fire and theft during this period OUTsurance will include this cover. Excess payments for those clients who do have a claim between April and June 2020 will also be reduced.

Old Mutual Iwyze

Throughout the lockdown Old Mutual Insure is open for business and they have built a complete off-site service solution able to support customers and partners. Their customers can continue to register claims, and request essential services such as plumbing, electrical and other emergency services, throughout the lockdown period.

There are several options available to customers in the short term (1 to 3 months):

• A premium deferment option, with delayed pay-back over a set period
• Leniency on missed debit orders were customers have lost or have experienced reduced income because of COVID-19 and this has caused delays of payments.
• Reducing premiums by allowing customers to temporarily amend their cover if, for example, a second car or a closed business won’t be used during the lockdown.
• An immediate relief program for iWYZE car insurance customers, who can register on the wyzeHUB before 30 April 2020, to activate a three-month 7.5% discount on their motor premiums.

To support this, Old Mutual Insure has established a ‘Help U’ team, whose sole purpose is to review premium relief requests across all commercial, agriculture and personal lines business.

Standard Bank Insurance

Standard Bank understands that during this period of uncertainty there may be heightened personal financial challenges you are dealing with. Should you find yourself in financial distress, they urge you to contact them to see how they can help you restructure your insurance cover, so you can ensure that you, your loved ones and your possessions remain protected and that your insurance policies don’t lapse.

They encourage you to make use of their digital channels to manage your insurance portfolio, safely and conveniently. You can register and track your burst geyser, storms or burst pipe claims on their Banking App or on their Insurance Online site, as well as, access and manage some of your insurance policies on these platforms.

Claims

You can also email your Insurance claims to the following email addresses:

• Funeral Plan Claims: [email protected]
• Personal Building Structure Claims: [email protected]
• Car and Home Content Claims: [email protected]
• Accident and Health Insurance Claims: [email protected]
• Commercial Insurance Claims: [email protected]

During these challenging times, Standard Bank is always available to help you protect what matters most. To make it a little easier for you, they are giving you 25% of your car insurance premiums back in cash!

Why are they doing it?

During the lockdown, they recognise that there will be fewer vehicles on the road and as a result, there will likely be less accidents. In response to this reduced risk, they are going to be refunding all of their insurance clients 25% of their car insurance premiums within 14 days after the lockdown ends.

How do you qualify?

To qualify, you need to ensure your premiums are paid up to date. This will also make sure your car is still covered during lockdown should anything happen. The cashback will apply to policies underwritten by Standard Insurance Limited only.

How is it calculated?
Standard Bank will be calculating the cashback at a rate of 25% per day, on the premium that you pay on your car insurance. The cashback is only applicable for the period of the Government announced lockdown:

• The lock down came into effect on 27 March. This means that for the last 5 days of March 2020 you will be refunded at 25% per day (27 – 31 March 2020) of your car insurance premium for March.
• The current lock down is currently set to end on 30 April 2020. This means that you will be refunded at 25% per day (1 – 30 April 2020) of your car insurance premium for April.
• Each months’ cashback is calculated separately.

We suggest you contact your Financial Advisor or your insurance/Investment company to discuss your options.

The InsuranceFundi Team