We tell the personal story of one of our clients and how their income protection policy was used to their advantage not once, but twice within a nine-month period.
In June 2021, Mr X was involved in a car accident and as a result, he was booked off from work for 10 days. Even though his medical aid and gap cover covered his medical expenses for minor injuries sustained, he was responsible for an excess payment of R5 000 for the damage done to his vehicle. Mr X’s temporary income protection paid out the entire 10 days that he was booked off from work since he is on a 7-day waiting period option, calculated as:
Monthly salary x 12 (months) divided by 365 (days) x 10 (days booked off covered) = total pay-out received
Therefore, Mr X could pay the excess payment for his vehicle from the pay-out of R13 752 received from his income protection policy.
Eight months later, Mr X was again involved in an accident – this time, a mountain biking accident in which he broke his arm. He was booked off for a period of 6 weeks and PPS paid out his claim in full. Even though the client’s medical aid and gap cover plans covered all his medical expenses, he was required to attend 10 sessions of physiotherapy which was only partly covered due to his hospital plan. This amounted to approximately R4 000 out of pocket expenses, as well as Uber costs to get to his appointments since he was unable to drive.
In this case, the amount of R29 358 paid out by PPS could also be used to cover these additional and unexpected costs.
This example illustrates how easily accidents can happen and since they are due to unforeseen circumstances, there is no guarantee that you are only afforded a certain number of accidents in a lifetime. As in Mr X’s case, he was involved in two serious accidents less than nine months apart. His income protection policy helped covering additional unforeseen expenses that resulted from both accidents, but that are not medical-related.