Selling PA

Accidents do happen

Per year:

• 20 MILLION people visit A&E in the UK (NHS.uk).
• 24,000 killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents (DoT 2010).
• 30,000 slips, trips and falls at work (HSE '09-'10).
• Cost to employers for accident and sickness £1 - 5 BILLION (HSE Cost of Workplace accident and Health).
• 6 MILLION working days lost (HSE '09-'10).

Reasons why you should sell personal accident cover

Groupama offers flexible and comprehensive business personal accident covers. Here are some reasons why you should sell it.

• You can earn up to 20% commission.
• We have a dedicated team to offer you expert advice, flexible underwriting solutions and help in showing your clients why the cover is important.
• Groupama's personal accident policy offers great benefits:
  • Death – up to £1,000,000;
  • Permanent total disablement – up to £1,000,000;
  • Paralysis – up to £1,000,000;
  • Loss of sight – up to £1,000,000;
  • Loss of limb – up to £1,000,000; and
  • Loss of speech – up to £1,000,000.
• Totally flexible policy that we can help you tailor to your client's needs.
• Basic cover from as little as £250 plus IPT.
• Discounts if your client holds another Groupama policy.
• Monthly instalments.
• You can show how your client can protect their most valuable asset – their people!

Some reasons why businesses buy business personal accident cover

• Your clients would never consider trading without cover for their premises, stock or contents – even if they have never had a loss. How would they trade if they had no people to run the place?
• The death or disablement of a key executive or any employee can be just as damaging to business turnover as a fire or a theft. Personal accident cover can provide benefits to pay for a temporary or replacement employee or cover overtime payments.
• Accident or illness could mean real hardship for an employee and their family if they are unable to work. Personal accident cover can also provide benefits to ease this burden.
• Many employers provide critical illness or permanent health insurance; personal accident can provide cover before those benefits kick in.

• Download our client leaflet to leave with your client (PDF. 256kb)

About PA

What is personal accident insurance?

Personal accident insurance is a collection of benefits payable to employers or employees in the event of accident or illness that makes a person unable to work.

Benefits can be selected as required and are payable as either fixed sums or as a percentage of salary.

Every client can decide what is best for them.

Demystifying the cover - what does that mean?

Policy limits

Policy limits are typically selected by the business to reflect the potential cost to replace an employee, compensate the individual or their dependants or to cover their weekly salary costs.

Benefits under a business policy can be related to salary, for example 4 x salary for death and PTD or a proportion of weekly pay for TTD. A policy can also cover set amounts.

Groupama also offers business travel cover as an extension to our group personal accident product. It is also available as a stand-alone cover. For more information, contact our team on 0870 241 6182 or email us: pa&travel.underwriting@groupama.co.uk

Any one person limit

Normally, insurers will set a limit of maximum compensation for any one person during the period of insurance. Usually this is set at the level of the highest paid individual covered under the policy.

Aggregate policy limit

Insurers may also limit their exposure to certain accumulation exposures such as the number of insured people travelling on one aircraft or at one location. This is called the aggregate limit.

TTD limits

The temporary total disability benefits (TTD) for both accident and illness are payable for the duration of any absence from the workplace. These can be payable for any number of weeks selected by the client. They are usually limited to a maximum of 52 weeks for illness and 104 weeks for accident events.

Deferment and excess periods

Like any other type of insurance, it is usual for an excess to apply. In the case of personal accident this is a deferment or excess period against the TTD and TPD benefits.

The deferment or excess period is the numbers of days at the start of any period of temporary disability where no benefit is payable.

What is the difference between a deferment period and an excess period?

A deferment does not 'use up' the benefit period at all. It just delays the start of the payments. An excess period is deducted from the benefit period.

Example 1

A 14 day deferment period in a 52 week benefit period

Example 2

A 14 day excess period in a 52 week benefit period

Deferment or excess periods often vary according to occupation, age or for participation in certain sports or pastimes. Customers can choose a longer deferment period in return for premium reductions.

Operative times

It's quite usual for personal accident cover to operate with different effective or operative times.

The most common is '24 hour' which means cover is in force all of the time for accidents that happen whilst working or when not.

Alternatively, a business might only cover employees whilst they are working or commuting to and from work. Premium savings are available by restricting the operative time.

Even more cost effective cover can be bought by restricting operative cover to be in force when employees are using certain items of machinery or only while driving company vehicles.

The possibilities are endless!

Persons to be insured

The insured business can decide who they want to buy cover for. It may be every employee or specific groups or even selected key individuals.

More than that, different benefits, different benefit amounts, different deferment periods and operative times of cover can apply to the different groups of insured persons. For example:

Get a quote

The information required to produce a quotation will vary between insurers and the type of risk.

The questions differ in respect of both individual and group quotes and the following check list should be regarded as the minimum that will be required by us in order to assess each risk. 

Group personal accident and illness covers - check list

• Full name and address of the proposer.
• The nature of the proposer's business, describing this in full.
• Past claims information.
• The type and number of employees to be covered (i.e. sales people, clerical employees, manufacturing employees).
• The level of benefits required for each group of employee.
• The operative time of cover for each group (i.e. 24 hour, occupation only, etc).
• Maximum individual earnings and the total wage roll per group if benefits are to be as multiples of salary.
• Maximum number of employees travelling together at any one time.
• Whether the people to be insured (employees) will make any contribution towards the insurance premiums.

Sometimes specific information about individual employees may be needed, such as past medical history. We will tell you if we need any specific information.

What if the business has never had personal accident cover?

For new personal accident risks we will need information from a company's accident records for work related injuries and information from their record of absenteeism.

Call us on 0870 241 6182 or email us: pa&travel.underwriting@groupama.co.uk

Groupama Insurances' personal accident cover

Key points to remember before getting a quote:

UK based

The policyholder will be the employer therefore the business/company taking out the policy to cover their employees must be based and registered in the UK. Typically this means that the employees will be UK resident although we will consider requests to cover some employees who might be based temporarily overseas.

Number of employees

We will typically insure SME risks with between 25-300 employees, but we will also consider larger or smaller companies too. The maximum benefit we will provide for any one life is £1m.

Occupations

We prefer to insure clerical or light manual trades. We will consider some manual business but not high hazard occupations, for example, explosives, demolition, mining, off shore, aircrew, armed forces, police or fire services, professional sports etc.

Benefits

Typical benefit amounts for death and capital benefits should not exceed five times an employee's annual salary. We will not write business on the basis of more than 100% of a weekly wage for TTD benefits without sound justification.

Accumulation

'General accumulation' is where more than one insured person is involved in the same loss. For example, for six people each with £100,000 death benefit killed in the same accident, the accumulation value would be £600,000.

'Aircraft accumulation' is where more than one insured person is involved in the same loss within an aircraft, for example, a plane crash.

The maximum accumulation level we currently offer is £10m but typical accumulation limits for group covers for both aircraft and general accumulation are in the region of £2m.

Operative times

Most covers are arranged on a 24-hour basis.

Illness cover

Illness cover applies to temporary disability only and is only available with 24 hour personal accident cover.

How to get a quote?

Call us on 0870 241 6182 or email us: pa&travel.underwriting@groupama.co.uk

• Full product information
• Download our client leaflet to leave with your client (PDF. 256kb)

Top tips

Give your clients food for thought

Pose these questions or download our client leaflet to leave with your client (PDF. 256kb)

• You might have financial protection if you lost your machinery in a fire, aren't the employees you rely on to operate it just as critical to your business?
• Do employees travel together to work or on business trips? Could you deal with the sudden absence of a number of your key employees if there was an accident?
• Are you heavily reliant on a number of key individuals because you have cut employee numbers? How would you manage if one of these key people had an accident and was absent from work for a prolonged period?
• Are you contracted to make salary payments when an employee is absent due to an accident? Could you afford to take someone on to cover their absence?
• Did you know basic personal accident cover can cost from under £25 a month. Also the policy can be arranged to cover as many or as few employees as you choose with the same flexibility in the level of cover? 

Overcoming objections

"Never heard of personal accident insurance?"

This insurance pays you (the employer) either a one off lump sum amount, or regular monthly amounts in the event of your employee(s) suffering an accident.

"We just cope with employees being off"

• Would you still be committed to pay their wages while they were off?
• How would you find the extra money to pay for an employment agency to find a temp until your employee returns to work?
• Would your business cope with a loss of production, loss of sales or re-training costs?
• Could you afford the specialist mobility equipment to allow the employee to return to the workplace?

"We already have life cover for death in service"

Personal accident insurance may provide cover for your business where an accident results in permanent disability.

Personal accident insurance can...

• Provide cover for your employees on a 24 hours worldwide basis;
• Settle claims quickly - don't have to prove negligence like a liability cover; and
• Cover your employees if they are killed in an accident that doesn't involve a third party – this is not the case for fleet insurance.

Personal accident insurance allows you the freedom to decide how you allocate the money if you make a claim. You could:

• Pay overtime to other workers to cover for short staffing;
• Pay recruitment costs to replace an injured employee;
• Provide facilities or mobility aids to allow disabled access;
• Pay retraining expenses;
• Provide a lump sum to the injured employee, their family or their estate; or
• A combination of these or many other options.

The cover available is flexible to suit your businesses' needs...

• You can insure all employees or choose to only cover categories of employees who are critical to your business.
• You select the time that the cover applies – eg 24 hours, only whilst undertaking their occupational duties, or you could select other times.
• You select the level of cover you want – eg multiples or percentages of salary or set benefit amounts.
• You select the benefits to be insured eg accidental death or disablement, loss of limbs or sight etc.
• You can add temporary disability benefits that would pay regular monthly / weekly amounts for a set period – perhaps to cover absence due to a broken leg.
• You build your policy to fit your business and budget.

Personal accident insurance offers benefits to your employees

• Providing this cover to your employees shows you are a caring employer, which can assist in the recruitment and retention of your employees.
• It provides a competitive remuneration package for the employee.
• A personal accident policy could complement the cover provided by private medical insurance policies and could be less expensive than you might think.

Personal accident cover can also include business travel

Cover can be arranged for employees undertaking business trips providing valuable protection against overseas medical expenses plus the usual covers associated with business travellers.

The information required to produce a quotation may vary between insurers and the type of risk to be insured.

The following check list should be regarded as the minimum that will be required by us in order to assess each risk:

• Full name and address of the proposer;
• The nature of the proposer's business, describing this in full;
• Past claims information;
• Proposed annual travel pattern*. The travel pattern should include average and maximum duration to the UK, Europe, North America and the rest of the World;
• The nature of typical business trips, detailing manual work undertaken and locations visited; and
• Maximum number of employees travelling together at any one time.

*1 person travelling equals 1 trip. Therefore 5 employees travelling on the same journey to the same destination will be classed as 5 trips.

Call us on 0870 241 6182 or email us: pa&travel.underwriting@groupama.co.uk

Downloads