Group Risk Benefits
Posted on 5th August 2024 at 15:48
As an employer, you might have heard the term “Group Risk benefits”. This is all about protecting your business’ biggest asset as well as your biggest risk & expense: your people. How would you feel and what would you do if a member of your team fell ill, had an accident which turned into a longer-term absence, or even passed away? You would want to financially protect them whilst minimising the impact on your day-to-day operation & colleagues. You can choose a company life insurance, income protection or critical illness policy which has preferential terms & pricing and it probably costs a lot less than you think.
An increasing number of employees know what a ‘good’ employer and employment contract looks like. They have an expectation around their employee benefits package and want to secure a healthy work/life balance. A decent salary is often considered paramount - certainly when you’re looking to attract & retain new talent - but it’s about much more than that these days. Staff are keen to feel part of your team and to be cared for; to protect themselves and their family against what life throws at them: illness, injury or even death. That’s where “group risk benefits” come in: they give employees access to insured financial protection cover that they might not otherwise be able to afford or access themselves. These benefits are usually insured contracts where you, the employer, act as the policyholder to cover some or all of your liability for death benefits, long-term sick pay and critical illness benefits. Whilst these three different types of policies all offer quality coverage, should you ever need to make a claim (the industry is rather good at paying claims by the way: £2.49bn last year alone!), they also come with a suite of valuable support services that your staff (and often their household family members too) can access from day one of employment to help keep them fit, healthy and in work. These can include access to fast-track vocational rehabilitation, 24/7 online GP and virtual wellbeing apps, second medical opinion services, personalised mental wellbeing support and even a dentist-on-demand!
If protecting your key people from the uncertainty of illness or death, whilst offering staff access to upfront wellbeing services at no additional cost, is something you’d like to explore further, please do get in touch so we can help bring this to life for your business. At Benefiz, we pride ourselves on going the extra mile for our clients – an extension of your HR team if you will. Oh, and I did promise to give you an idea about costs, didn’t I? Well, check out this group life assurance indicative cost calculator from AIG Life (now part of Aviva) to see how much, or in fact little, it could cost to introduce a life insurance policy for your workforce. I think you will be pleasantly surprised!
By Paul Davey
Group Risk & Healthcare Team Leader
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