Protecting your finances & future with One Plan life insurance

00:13 Norm Shiver:  All right, everyone, welcome to the Tea and Mortgage Podcast, episode number 19, with your host, John Coleman.

00:20 John Coleman: Hello, everyone. Lovely to be talking to you again today, and today we’re going to be talking about the more serious side of the mortgage, which is actually insurance and ensuring you and your family are well protected. I’m just bringing the news that we have teamed up with Irish Life to bring something to you all. It’s definitely not an upbeat subject, and I’m going to call it out as I see it, as in it’s not something, but it’s massively important. And literally, I came back on Tuesday and a client of ours who had closed their mortgage four months ago had been diagnosed with, unfortunately, cancer. Now, the bank only would require her to have insurance if she dies, right? That’s all. The banks only care about themselves, okay? They don’t care about the person, per se. They only look after their interests. The client, when we were looking at this, decided they wanted to take what they call serious illness cover. Now, she took a full amount of the mortgage. So when she was talking to my colleague, and God love her, she was in a very bad place because she didn’t even fully remember four months ago. When you get news like that, you forget everything, basically. But we were able to tell her that financially, she was going to be okay. She was going to be able to focus on recovery, basically, because she was worried, okay, God, her husband is going to have to stop working to look after the children, basically. So she was very well thought of. Her mortgage would be cleared, her husband would do her work. She had what they call an income protection policy, which kicks in after three to six months where her income would be paid. So she would still be getting an income, her mortgage would be cleared, and her husband can basically look after the kids. So she can focus on recovery. Now, insurance, everyone feels it’s a waste of money until something goes wrong, basically. You don’t need it until you need it, then you really, really need it. In my role, I don’t like having challenging conversations. I’m all about being able to achieve a positive outcome, which is ultimately a great experience in relation to buying a house. In fact, that’s a journey I like being involved in, because it’s a happy journey, shall we say, because as long as you get the keys, you feel incredible about yourself. But the other side of the coin is, if something goes wrong, we are obliged to at least bring all of this to people’s attention.

03:45 John Coleman: With regard to that, what we’ve done is we have teamed up with Irish Life. Now, only 5% of the brokers out there have this kind of relationship with Irish Life, and on the back of that, they have this one policy that’s only available to those 5% of brokers called One Plan. From my point of view, I don’t like to be a pushy salesman, so what this does is, it’s regulated by the Central Bank. The Central Bank has reviewed this, and it gives a full financial review for our clients to highlight the areas of risk or vulnerability to certain things happening, and then give them a kind of what they should be covering, if they were happy to take a very comprehensive cover, or somewhere in the middle, or somewhere just kind of basic, and then give the clients then the choice what they want based on available budget, and what level of risk they’re comfortable taking with regard to their financial future in the case of something else, if something goes wrong. What I’m delighted about with this is this isn’t us trying to sell anything. This is us just presenting what had been basically revised and reviewed, and we could just present this, not being the knowledge that we have done our job properly. The client then makes the decision as to what they feel they’re most comfortable with.

05:34 Norm Shiver: Of course. I mean, it’s a great service. It’s a great tool. Again, that’s the tricky thing with insurance, is you don’t need it until you need it, but I bet if you hold- I don’t know about you, Norm, but when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, I thought I was invincible from a health point of view. I thought nothing would go wrong. But life teaches you some harsh lessons along the way, but depending on when you’re taking something out, you might feel you’re perfectly healthy. I always say to people, I don’t know if we will have this conversation, but I kind of want to talk to you. I didn’t ask you about car insurance or disability compensation. I said, listen, it completely is a waste of money, but you want it to be a waste of money, because if it’s a waste of money, well, then nothing’s gone wrong.

06:32 John Coleman: Yeah, exactly. It’s a hedge against what if, and when you’re young, exactly to your point, you’re spending every dollar enjoying life, or you think you’re invincible, but when you’re in your 30s, 40s, and then health becomes everything in your 40s, 50s, but-

06:53 Norm Shiver: We start counting after that, don’t we?

06:59 John Coleman: Yeah, we sure do, I hope. Also, the thing is, when people enter that stage of life, when they have a wife or a husband, when they have children, they have a lot more to lose, and it’s not just themselves that they’re thinking about. You look at the cost of not having it if something happens. I bet if you polled 100 people who had a medical disability, lost their job, a loved one had cancer, all these things that life could throw a sick kid, all these things that are terrible that happen in life, I bet 100 of them would say they were happy they had this insurance if they did have it, or they wish they had it. Again, I think you have a great viewpoint on it where it’s not for everyone, and it’s a personal choice. Here’s the information. If you want it, here’s the best option, as you as a broker, and one of the only 5% mortgage brokers that offer this One Plan. If it is right for you, let’s look at it together. If you do want it, I could help you.

08:02 John Coleman: Yeah, and from our point of view, as I said, the journey of buying a house is a very exciting journey. It’s one that you could easily ignore this, as in the bank only needs you to cover insurance in case of death. This is the kind of one time in your life, I’m a big believer in spending your life working on important things that are not urgent, but a lot of people just spend their lives dealing with the urgent rather than the important. Having yourself covered in the event of death, illness is never urgent because at the moment in time, you’re fine, but it’s always important to have it. Where getting a mortgage forces, it’s a point in time where, well…

09:04 John Coleman: You’re looking at it anyway, so you should take advantage of looking at it in its totality and taking a view of the mortgage in its totality with regard to not just one entity in its own right. I’m delighted to be able to have this offer, to bring to people’s attention. You don’t see self-analyse, but the questions that it’s designed to ask get people thinking around the what-ifs. If you’re a five-year-old child and something has to happen, what level of cover would you need in place till say the age of 25? That’s the way that some people might agree that that’s an appropriate age to kind of at that point, kids should be self-sufficient. My mum always says it’s an appropriate term for a five-year-old, but that’s a different conversation. But in relation to the offer plan, they would look at it in real time. If the age is clear, that’s fine. You need some extra cover to cover 20 years, but as the kids get older that level of cover will diminish. So you could tailor it to some ethics about it. You just think it’s a great offering, put it in front of people, and then let them decide. So if they do their own due diligence, and then they’ve made their own choices about, we’re comfortable not taking this, or we’re not comfortable about taking this, then that’s fine.

10:48 Norm Shiver: Absolutely. It’s their choice. And then, like you said, by the time you need it, you know, if you lost the job, if you have, especially a sick, you know, person is sick or in a car crash or whatever happens, by the time you need it, you can’t react. You can’t get it then. It’s only something you could get ahead of time to, you know, it’s got to be important, but not urgent ahead of time. And when you are getting your mortgage, when you have a house, all of a sudden, it’s a different conversation around finances, because this is a hedge against losing that house, and you’re, you know, and defaulting on mortgage and everything that you worked so hard for, and setting yourself back so far, if something does happen in life, like an illness or whatever. So yeah, it’s not for everyone, you know, 10 years ago. And it’s all about having, knowing what your kind of, not disposable, but your discretionary spend is, right? How much per month do you have discretion to spend to do whatever you want, right? And it’s based on that, knowing what that figure is, will determine how much you feel you could put towards something. And as I said, every day, you’re never going to think about this in real terms. But if you think about it, when something happens, unfortunately, it’s then too late. You know, so when you’re getting your mortgage, this is a great opportunity for at least taking a full view. I’ve never personally wanted to be involved in this, to a degree. I’ve done it before, but I prefer asking someone who is comfortable talking about these unfortunate things that can happen in life. But with this particular offering, I’m never actually going to be comfortable, because I’m not going to push anything down on them. I’m still going to say, here’s your options, folks. You tell me, and we’ll just make it happen.

12:41 John Coleman: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good example. You know, if five years ago, you know, you present, someone presented this to me, I’ve said, no way. That’s a, you know, I don’t need it. I’m fine. You know, this could never happen to me. I’m invincible. I’m younger, youngish, still clinging to semi young, but you know, and I don’t have the income for it and stuff. And then today, I would, I would sign up as quickly as I could, you know, and that’s just how people’s needs and priorities change and how you start looking at that next phase of your life and protecting what you have, including your family and your health, you know. So that’s great. As I mentioned earlier, when we got the news that one of our clients had lived up to four months had been diagnosed with cancer, it was awfully sad. And yet we almost felt, well, this person had made the right choice. Suddenly, all the financial worries are taken from their shoulders. Yeah, huge on top of having to basically battle through a recovery phase. So we were delighted that we had been trying to take on board. And it was unusual because the husband wasn’t able to get this because of an underlying medical issue. Normally in this case, if one person can’t get it, the other person will say, I don’t know, I don’t need it either. Right. But she made a choice that she did. And well, from a financial planning point of view, I wish she didn’t need it. But unfortunately, she did. But she made the right choice, basically. With insurance, you hope to God, it’s a waste of money. Yeah, that’s the best case scenario, right? Best case scenario is, well, I paid all these premiums and nothing happened. You know, that’s the biggest win you could have is if you quote, unquote, wasted that money, right? And you don’t wish for any other circumstance or any other scenario. You don’t have gone, she was a little bit off. My heart breaks when I think about it. I’m from a business. First of all, yeah.

15:01 John Coleman: Being back on our situation, you said it, and you said it yourself, like when someone is going through something like this, whether it’s cancer or a sick loved one or a child or, you know, an injury, a terrible injury, whatever, a death, and it’s, it’s, you can’t even imagine the pressure of having the financial burden of “Oh, my God, where are we going to live? How are we going to pay our bills? Where are we going to, you know, how are we going to pay for extra treatment? How are we going to do…” I mean, it’s like the whole world is on your shoulders that you can’t sleep. I mean, you literally, you know, this just consumes you and you can’t breathe. And so to have the financial aspect taken out of it. Yeah, she, because of the news was so devastating. She didn’t know she knew she had something, but she was wondering what did she have? What did she take? So at least it takes more level of worry away from her, which is massive. And then literally all you have to do is worry about focusing on getting better as soon as possible. So yeah. And so John, I have in front of me, three particulars or specifics of this plan, and what they cover. And maybe I could mention them. And you could give a little bit of feedback or explain them. So the first one is Family Income Replacement.

16:25 Norm Shiver: Yeah, well, that would be it’s in relation to the on debt. It pays out a lump sum. Okay, so dependent, whatever, what would be looked at incoming over that figure would be the level of mortgage, do you have any cover with your job? And what age are your kids, right? That would then determine the level of extra cover that you want to meet. And then it would be tailored with regards to whenever the youngest child will get to the age of 25. So that’s, that will be what that covers there basically. So it factors everything in. It advises you what extra cover you might need on top of having your mortgage cleared. So that well, the mortgage may be cleared, but that’s only say 30% of expenses. A lot of other things need to be taken care of on top of that. So that’s what would factor that in.

17:28 John Coleman: Yeah. And then the second one is Monthly Bill Coverage.

17:33 Norm Shiver: But yeah, that’s, there’s two sides to this one. This is a bit similar to you get sick, okay, and you can’t go back to work for a period of time. This then basically would be a form of replacement income to cover your bills, your major bills. So your mortgage, your eating, your food, right? You get something in line with what you’re spending on a monthly basis to cover those things. And that’s, it’s kind of a form of Income Protection where your income is paid to cover just the major bills that you would have. There’s obviously details around that, but we would obviously go through that in much more detail.

18:20 John Coleman: And then the last one, the third big one is Lump Sum for Recovery. If you’re diagnosed with a specific illness.

18:25 Norm Shiver: Yeah. Well, that’s basically if you’ve got a serious illness and you decided you wanted excellent cover, you’d make a call as to how much you’d feel you’d need. Would you want to be able to cover for a year? Would you want to cover for two years? So that would determine the level of lump sum that you would need, whatever yearly costs would you have that would need to be taken care of. So that’s what that is. So you’ve got kind of all the major illnesses, a heart attack, cancer, stroke. Those basically big ones, they would be a big, but they have to help you recover because with modern medicine, more and more people do recover, right? But you need to make sure you’re financially rooted in the process of recovery.

19:17 John Coleman: Yeah. And maybe then since you broke it down so well, you could tell people basically what the process is to apply for this, how they apply, like, you know, through you and your service, what’s the right time to contact you, all of that.

19:38 Norm Shiver: Well, we do this in two ways. We would do this, obviously, there’s nothing new that we’ve just taken on board. One thing I do, and I didn’t mention this, what I do like is it’s a tailored plan, okay? So it’s reviewable and you can always add to it or subtract to it as life brings new events. So if you suddenly had another child, you may need to take extra cover, but you can add to it. You’re not starting again, basically, right? Or if your incomes went up, or for some reason, you didn’t feel you needed something anymore, you can always reduce it. So it’s a plan that you don’t need to let you want to do something else. You don’t need to close, you can add to it.

20:34 John Coleman: That’s great. So it’s not set in stone. You could, as your life changes, your needs, your income, your family, everything changes. It’s all adjustable, huh?

20:43 Norm Shiver: Absolutely. And I really like that part of it. Just in relation to how we would bring this, all we would do is, and one other thing I like about, you know me, I like technology and processes to make things as quickly as possible for people and for ourselves. What they have is a system whereby all the medical questions that they’d like just need to fill in a manual form. They’ll get a link with a list of all their medical questions and they will respond and go direct into Irish life. And if there’s any more information needed, they can come back with extra questions or information could be, could be questioned or could be sent out to your doctor to get that extra information. But it’s, it’s a very slick process. And very, very efficiently. That was definitely the biggest, one of the biggest reasons on top of just being able to produce an offering to clients that they could understand and work through the technology, the culture behind it. So they’re also going to be bringing more grief into people’s lives just to make it process happen. You know, so we do this in two stages. We will revolve into our role it all out. Obviously we’re going to be doing this in conjunction with, with the mortgage when they’re looking to close the mortgage, we will have that review at that point in time. Okay. So that it will be in line with, well, at a moment in time when you’re actually making one of the biggest financial decisions in your life, you should be taking a holistic view of your set of circumstances. Obviously we’re, we’re open to having this conversation with, with anyone and everyone who’s interested in having this conversation because, well, as I mentioned earlier on, nobody ever views this on a daily basis as urgent, but it’s very important. So it’s something that if someone feels it’s important and wants to act on, on something for them, whether they’ve got a mortgage now or not, they might just have the bare minimum covered and don’t feel that they’re adequately covered. Well, then the conversation would be very open to having. I’m just taking a review because I say, well, I implied myself and the team on it is not being a pushy salesperson. We are always here to advise and recommend, but ultimately the decision would lie with our client and the customer. And then we just facilitate what they want.

23:27 John Coleman: Yeah, that’s great. And I know we have a page on the website where people could go and jcmortgages.ie/insurance /. And then of course they could just call you and you have some dedicated representatives that are at your office now that are dealing with this. One of the girls has been with me. I’ve been in the business for 30 years doing this. So she has a huge amount of experience. Yeah. It’s a conversation that I’ve had in the past. And with this, I’m going to be having these conversations now myself because I think it’s really, really important. What I never wanted to do was be pushing insurance on people because I didn’t want to affect my kind of relationship with people. But this is, this is not pushy selling at all. This is here you go folks. These are really well-researched here, proper review. You tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen. So I’m very comfortable standing over that.

24:33 Norm Shiver: All right, everyone. So that was Tea and Mortgage episode number 19. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.

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