All you need to know about PHI or Disability Insurance:

Permanent Health Insurance
Works Tasks

You will need to input your sex, date of birth, if you are a smoker, your annual income, how much you would like to receive each month, whether the premium and the benefit should be index linked, how long you wish to wait before the policy pays out, what basis you wish to take the policy out: own occupation or works tasks, and finally how long you want the policy and by implication the benefits to last for.

Permanent Health or Disability Insurance (top)

This will pay out a regular monthly income whilst you continue to be unable to work due to long-term disability arising from injury or illness. The payments will only start once you have been unable to work for a set period called the deferred or waiting period. You select the waiting period before the policy starts and it can be 4, 13, 26 or 52 weeks. The longer the waiting period, the cheaper the cover will be. The payments continue until you are able to return to work or the policy end date, whichever is the sooner.

The level of benefit and the waiting period should be chosen carefully because you cannot be better off ill than working, and payments will not be made under the policy if this would be the case. As a rule of thumb you cannot insure yourself for more than 50% of your earned income.

You also need to choose the "Disability Definition" - i.e. what constitutes disability and triggers the policy to pay out. You can choose either "own occupation" (meaning you can no longer carry out the functions of your current job, or "work tasks" (meaning that you cannot carry out any work, based on a standard list of work tasks, see below).

Works Tasks (top)

Being disabled according to all the requirements of either of the following definitions:

Work tasks Being disabled:

i) through illness (other than mental illness of any kind) or injury; and

ii) to the extent of becoming unable to do any two of the six work tasks listed below, without the help of another person, but with the use of appropriate assistive aids and appliances.

Work tasks definitions:

Walking The ability to walk 200 metres on a level surface with a stick or other aid without stopping or sever discomfort.

Lifting The ability to pick up 1kg from table height and carry it for 5 metres.

Using a pen/pencil/keyboard The ability to use a pen, pencil or keyboard with either hand or using any aids.

Hearing The ability to hear well enough to understand someone speaking a common language in a normal voice in a quiet room with a hearing aid.

Speech The ability to be understood in a common language in a quiet room.

Vision The ability to see well enough to read 16 point print using spectacles or other aids.

Mental incapacity
Being disabled:
i) through an organic brain disease or brain injury which affects the ability to reason and understand; and
ii) the condition has deteriorated to the extent that continual supervision and the assistance of another person is required.