Elsie Lange
If Gillian Brown continues paying premiums on her funeral insurance at the current rate, the 71-year-old pensioner will have paid TAL Insurance, or Insuranceline, more than $51,000 by the time she turns 89.
That’s what she’s required to do, according to her insurance policy – pay premiums until she’s 89, or dies.
She’ll have paid $30,000 more than the two $9500 plans she holds for herself and her husband, Alan, are worth combined. She’s already paid the company more than $20,756 as of July.
She struggles when $65 is directly debited from her bank account every fortnight – but TAL won’t give the money back, and her premium has already been reduced.
Paying $130 a month in premiums as well as rent, while subsisting on a pension, isn’t easy.
“A lot of people I’ve spoken to have not even thought about funeral insurance, I thought I was being smart by having it so that it covered me, so that the family didn’t have to worry if anything happened to me,” she said.
“Whereas now, I feel like a fool, because I’ve been paying all this money for such a long time.”
The Williams Landing resident signed up in 2003, when she was ill, recovering from surgery and pneumonia, and unsure of what the future would hold. An advertisement came on daytime television and it just made sense.
This year, when Ms Brown contacted Insuranceline to say she couldn’t afford what was a $80.71 fortnightly premium, they reduced it to $65.82 – her current rate. They also reduced her’s and Alan’s plans from $12,500 each to $9500 each, documents seen by Star Weekly reveal.
“I joined, and I don’t know whether I wasn’t listening properly, but I didn’t realise that the insurance money or the premium would increase every year,” she said.
Ms Brown reached out to Star Weekly after she read about disability pensioner David Cail in June, who also holds a funeral insurance policy with TAL, a product Consumer Action Law Centre assistant director Cat Newton described as “junk”.
Mr Cail had successfully managed to reduce his premiums to about $2 a fortnight after Star Weekly raised questions with TAL.
An Insuranceline spokesperson said the company took seriously the importance of ensuring customers understood the products they purchased “and the differences between the insurance products we provide and the savings products”.
“Claims for our products can be paid at any time after the policy commences. For the majority of our customers the premiums paid are less than the claim amount received,” the spokesperson said.
“We take great care to identify if customers may be vulnerable and have a range of support options available, including assistance for people who may be financially vulnerable.
“We encourage customers who are having difficulty paying premiums to contact us to discuss these options as we are committed to helping where we can.”
Ms Brown said she doesn’t think she’ll ever get all of the money back, but she would like to see her premiums significantly reduced without her coverage changing, as the cost of living continues to soar.
“I just feel there are other people out there who are struggling as well, who feel duped, like we do,” she said.
“We know we can be cremated for a lot less than $9500 each, which is what we want.”
