Group life

What is group life?

At its simplest, group life cover pays out a lump sum or pension to an employee’s dependants if they die whilst in your employment.

When someone dies suddenly, their family faces a dramatic drop in income at a time of great stress. It’s economically reassuring for employees to know that if this happens, their employer will make financial provision for their dependants.

AEGON Scottish Equitable offers five different products in its group life family, each designed to meet a specific need:

• group life cover
• excepted group life cover
• single life high earner’s cover
• equity partner group life cover
• spouse and partner life cover

Making sure that money is available to meet the employee's family's liabilities – such as mortgage and funeral expenses – can help them through a difficult time.

Benefits for you

• Our competitive rates are guaranteed for up to two years.*
• You can control your costs by keeping the current HMRC earnings cap or by introducing a salary cap of your choice (group life policies only).
• We’re expert in dealing with flexible benefits arrangements.
• We’ll take any other life covers you hold with us into account when working out free cover benefit and rates.**
• We'll always aim to review and settle claims promptly.
• RED ARC bereavement support can help your employees, line managers and their families to cope with the effects of terminal illness and bereavement.
• You can link a single life high earner’s policy to your main group life scheme, giving the member access to our generous free cover benefit and improved group rates.

*subject to terms and conditions.
**except spouse and partner life cover.

Benefits for your employees

• minimal need to give evidence of health due to our generous free cover
• medical examinations can be carried out in the employee’s home or workplace by a qualified nurse or paramedic, or by their own doctor in their local surgery
• if you choose lump sum cover only, the option for members to ask the trustees to redirect some or all of the benefit as income - very useful for high-earning members whose total benefits may be close to or above the lifetime allowance
• reassurance of continued cover if they’re absent due to sickness or injury
• access to RED ARC's service if they're bereaved, or for their families if they die

Linkages

If you hold more then one group life cover with us, we’ll normally calculate the free cover benefit (ie. the amount of cover an employee can have without underwriting) taking into account the membership across all schemes. This gives you a higher free cover benefit and reduces the need for underwriting.

You can also choose, with our agreement, to link schemes for the purpose of calculating rates.

*The lifetime allowance is one of the new tax controls introduced on A-day (6 April 2006), applying to all registered pension schemes. It controls the total amount of benefits an individual can receive from all registered schemes throughout their lifetime. This includes retirement benefits and lump sum death benefits but not dependants’ pensions and for 2008/09 is set at £1.65 million. Benefits paid which exceed the lifetime allowance limit will be subject to a tax charge. For more information, speak to your financial adviser.