Insurance in Superannuation Voluntary Code of Practice

What is the Code?

The Code is the superannuation industry’s commitment to high standards when providing insurance cover to our members. This means we’ll commit to being transparent, fair, respectful, honest and timely and ensure value for money cover.

What does this mean for you?

You can expect us to continue our work to improve Rest’s insurance offering and the way it is delivered to you. Rest’s adoption of the Code means we’ve committed to the following principles:

Providing you access to appropriate and affordable insurance cover

We’ll design our insurance offerings to be flexible and value for money.

Giving you greater certainty of your cover

We’ll be clear about what cover you have, when it’ll automatically stop and how to reinstate it if you’d like to.

Taking insurance out of the ‘too-hard-basket’

We’ll provide straightforward information to help you understand your insurance so you can make informed decisions. We’ll also provide special support for members who may need it.

What we’ll do

Here are some of the key points we’re focusing on in our transition plan to comply with the Code, and how they’ll benefit you.

Providing you access to appropriate insurance cover

When we design our automatic insurance cover (for our members who receive insurance by default, without asking) we’ll assess their likely insurance needs based on a range of factors such as life-stage, demographics, work status, and the ability to be insured elsewhere.

Providing you access to affordable insurance cover

We’ll design cover that is affordable and does not inappropriately erode your super balance. We’ll be transparent in how we’ve determined an affordable level of cover.

Giving you greater certainty of cover

We currently cancel your insurance cover if we haven’t received any money in your account for 16 continuous months.

From 1 April 2020, this will change from 16 to 13 continuous months. We’ll write to you before your insurance cover is cancelled and let you know how you can keep your cover if you still need it.

If your insurance is cancelled because there isn’t enough money in your account, we’ll make it easy to restart your account if you still want the cover.

Taking insurance out of the ‘too-hard basket’

We know that everyone has different needs and we’ll be proactive in recognising and providing support to those members who might need some extra help. This may include people from non-English speaking backgrounds, those with disabilities, and any other instances you may need us – we’re here to help.

We’ve already pinpointed opportunities for improving the way we handle claims and the support we offer to our members. This includes the continual improvement of technology, processes and communication so that the entire claims process will be a better one.

In addition, we’ll publish our Insurance Strategy on our website. This will explain how we’ve designed our automatic insurance cover and will help you decide whether automatic insurance cover is right for you.

And we’ll publish Key Facts Sheets allowing you to easily compare the key features of our insurance offerings against others in the market.

When we’ll do this by

We’re already complying with many of the Code requirements and our aim is to meet all the remaining requirements and be fully compliant by December 2020. We are well on track to achieve this. However, the Code will also be updated to reflect some recent changes to superannuation laws, so ultimately our compliance date will depend on when these changes are finalised.

Our transition plan

Our transition plan gives you an overview of what we’re aiming to achieve and by when. To let you know how we’re tracking, we’ll update this page with our progress, and any changes that may impact you.