Best life insurance in Australia*

Rewards programs offers both discounts on your life insurance cover as well as items like gym memberships and fitness devices. In return, you'll need to show a healthy lifestyle.

• Your premiums. For example, if you can show proof of gym membership or evidence of health screening, you often qualify for a discount of around 10% on premiums.
• Extra rewards. Some providers like AIA have a program that can offer up to 50% off Virgin Active, Fitness First and Anytime Fitness memberships.

Exclusions will vary between policies, but some of the more common things you will find include:

• If the insured event which resulted in a claimable injury was the result of consumption of drugs or alcohol other than prescribed by a doctor and taken as directed
• If the claimable injury, illness or death was the result of a pre-existing medical condition
• If the claim is for a health event such as heart attack or coronary, and you have a body mass index above of a certain level, high levels of blood cholesterol or high blood pressure. These types of exclusions are more common in policies that do not require any medical or blood testing.
• If the claim is the result of suicide or intentional self-injury, either shortly after taking out the policy or ever
• If the insured event was the result of certain high risk occupations such as those which involve working at heights over 15 meters, with explosives, underground in mines, on an offshore oil rig or with the armed forces
• If the insured event was the result of a dangerous pastime like cave or deep sea diving, mountaineering, abseiling, rock climbing or canyoning, or racing cars, motorcycles and other motorised vehicles

You should always look at the exclusions, particularly if your policy does not require medical or blood tests, or is otherwise easier to sign up for. These exclusions are one of the ways some insurers may financially protect themselves from high risk policyholders without requiring tests or examinations prior to signup.

This broadly refers to the ease with which you can adjust your policy and the availability of options, including:

• Adjusting your cover. This may include adding family members, reducing or increasing the sum insured, adjusting for changed circumstances or lifestyle factors and the removal or addition of new cover. Some policies will let you do this at any time, while others may only offer it at renewal or not at all.
• Whether you can put policies on hold. Temporarily pausing your life insurance can stop you from having to pay premiums while looking for a new job or adapting to new financial circumstances, without cancelling your cover altogether.
• The number of potential beneficiaries and the ability to change them. All policies will have a maximum number of beneficiaries, rarely more than five, and flexible policies will let you change these more easily.
• Indexation for inflation. This feature means your sum insured will be automatically adjusted for inflation, typically to a maximum of 5% per year. It’s a good inclusion for long term policies.

This is the highest sum that will be paid out by your insurer, either for a specific event or in total. Some of the limits you may encounter are:

• Lifetime limits. This is the most you can claim from an entire policy, or certain parts of a policy, over its lifespan.
• Individual, partner or family limits. These are the maximum amounts that can be claimed for these groups.
• Per event limits. Most injuries and illnesses covered by trauma insurance will have maximum amounts that will be paid to cover them. Similarly, income protection and TPD insurance will typically have their own maximums

This is whether or not you are able to take out a policy or claim for certain things. For example, some policies might require you to be in a certain age group.

• Age. It can be difficult to take out a life insurance policy over the age of 65 or under the age of 18.
• Health. Many policies will only cover you if you agree to take a medical or blood test first, or at least fill out a questionnaire. Others may forgo these but will have strict exclusions in place to protect them from having to pay out for expected conditions in high risk customers. For example, a very overweight person might be able to take out a policy without medical testing, but it might not cover them for diabetes-related conditions.
• Other family members. Children and partners may have their own separate eligibility requirements on policies that offer cover for them.