Help your employee insure against death and disability

● Salaried employees typically enjoy group life benefits that provide cover against a loss of earnings through death or disability before retirement for you or your family. In addition to enjoying subsidised cover, many employees benefit from group rates.

Sam Fleming, marketing and innovation officer at Simply, and Simon Nicholson, its head of product and analytics, say when an employee earns below about R10,000 a month, their record for paying premiums each month is so bad that it is much more cost-effective to sell cover to an employer.

As a result, the group cover is much cheaper than an individual life policy.

By way of example, Nicholson says a 30-year-old woman in the Western Cape, earning R15,000 a month and not working in a dangerous sector of the economy, could get R800,000 life cover, disability cover of R450,000 and funeral cover of R25,000 for R183 a month on an individual policy — but group life cover would cost just R82 a month.

Simply has launched a simple group life policy for small and micro-enterprises with anything from five employees, as well as a policy for domestic employees, both of which you can apply for online.

Recognising the problem that lowincome earners have maintaining their premiums on life policies, MobiLife has launched funeral cover and life cover in the form of food vouchers, which do not lapse when premiums are not paid.

MobiLife CEO Frank Schutte says the life assurance industry signs up 6-million policyholders every year, but cancels 5.2million a year when policyholders skip their premiums for more than two months.

Instead of lapsing, MobiLife’s cover reduces for every month of premiums you have missed over the past 12 months.

If you pay all 12 months’ premiums, you will receive 100% cover, but if you only pay nine, your cover falls to 75%, he says.