HELP
Insurance
How the insurance page reconciles existing cover with the fact find, calculates the household's protection needs, reports the gap, and what does and does not reach the advice document and the client portal.
Updated 3 September 2026
What this screen is for
The Insurance Needs Analysis works at household level and covers the primary client and their partner. Choose a household and the page loads each of those two people’s saved analysis and the fact-find figures behind it. A third household member has no place on this page.
There are four tabs, in the order the work happens: Existing Cover, Needs Analysis, Gap Analysis and Recommendation.
Everything on the page saves itself two seconds after a change, and Save Analysis saves at once. Save writes per person, so a household of two is two saves.
Existing cover
Each person has two tables, and the first, From Fact Find, is read-only: one row per cover the fact-find insurance section records as held, with the insurer, policy number, sum insured and annual premium entered there. A cover marked “Yes” shows as In force; any other held answer shows as Under review. The premium type column is blank because the fact find asks no stepped-or-level question.
The second table, Manually entered, is yours. Each row has a type (Life, TPD, Income protection, Trauma, Business expense or Other), insurer, policy number, structure (Super, Outside super, Group or Other), sum insured, premium type (blank, Stepped or Level), annual premium, status (In force, Under review, Lapsed or Cancelled) and a portal toggle. A new row starts as Life, in super, in force, with no premium type chosen.
Both tables end up in the one policy record that the advice document, the client portal and the advice engine read. The fact-find rows are written there by the fact-find save and the manual rows by this page’s save, each keeping to its own rows, so neither save can remove the other’s policies.
Three things about how a manual row travels:
- Only the status In force counts as in force downstream. Under review, Lapsed and Cancelled are all recorded as not in force.
- A type of Other has no downstream equivalent. The row is kept on this page, and after the save the status line tells you it could not be recorded for the portal or the advice document. A structure of Other is stored as not recorded rather than guessed.
- The premium is stored as an annual figure, matching the column heading.
Removing a row retires its policy rather than deleting it, and every reader (the client’s profile, the advice document, the portal, this page’s own portal toggles) leaves retired policies out.
The portal toggle on a manual row appears once the row has been saved for the first time. Fact-find rows carry no toggle on this page.
For income protection and business expense cover the stored sum insured is a monthly benefit, and the advice document and the portal label it that way. Life, TPD and trauma are lump sums.
Needs analysis
Pick one of four methods; the life cover need is the only figure the method changes.
| Method | Life cover need |
|---|---|
| Human life value | Income × years to retirement, less super, floored at zero |
| Debt coverage | Debts + funeral costs + estate administration |
| Family needs | (Household expenses + childcare) × dependant years, plus education lump sum, debts, funeral and estate costs, less super and other assets, floored at zero |
| DINK / minimal | Debts + funeral costs |
Income here means salary plus other income. The other needs do not depend on the method: TPD is income times the TPD multiple; income protection is income times the benefit percentage, divided by twelve, as a monthly figure; trauma is the trauma cover target you enter; business expense is the monthly overhead you enter.
The waiting period, benefit period and cover duration fields are recorded for the recommendation record. No calculation on this page reads them.
Where the inputs come from
Every time a household loads, the fact find fills these fields per person: salary; other income (other, bonus and pension income added together); super balance; total debts (the fact-find summary’s figure for liabilities this person owns); and other assets (the person’s owned assets less their super, floored at zero). Household expenses are the members’ annual expenses added together.
The rest start at defaults:
| Field | Default |
|---|---|
| Years to retirement | 20 |
| TPD income multiple | 5 |
| Trauma cover target | $200,000 |
| Income protection benefit | 75% |
| Waiting period | 4 weeks |
| Benefit period | 2 years |
| Business expense cover duration | 12 months |
| Funeral and final costs | $25,000 |
| Estate administration | $10,000 |
| Dependant years, childcare, education lump sum, monthly overhead | 0 |
Typing into a fact-find-sourced field marks it as overridden, and your figure then wins on every later load. Revert drops the override and puts the fact-find figure back. A field that is neither overridden nor known to the fact find reads as zero.
Gap analysis
For each person and each of the five cover types, the gap is the need less what they have. “Have” is the sum insured across the manually entered policies of that type whose status is In force. Fact-find rows are not counted, and structure makes no difference.
| Pill | When |
|---|---|
| Not required | The need is zero |
| Shortfall | Need exceeds have |
| Excess | Have exceeds need by more than 10% of the need |
| Adequate | Have covers the need, within that 10% |
One unit trap is worth knowing. For income protection and business expense the gap table divides the sum insured you entered by twelve before comparing it with the monthly need, so on this tab the entered figure is being read as an annual benefit. The stored policy, the advice document and the portal read that same figure as a monthly benefit. Until those agree, check the income protection row of the gap table against the figure you actually entered.
Recommendation
Each person has five rows, one per cover type, with Life, TPD, Income protection and Trauma ticked by default and Business expense unticked. The Need column is filled from the needs analysis and cannot be typed over. You enter the recommended sum, structure, insurer and estimated annual premium; a ticked row also gets a detail card with waiting and benefit periods (income protection and business expense), a definition (TPD) and a rationale. The total premium counts ticked rows only. Recommendation and next review dates, implementation notes and an adviser summary sit beneath.
All of that is saved with the analysis, and none of it is read by the advice document, the advice engine or the portal. Those read the policy record described under Existing cover, and a separate needs analysis record described next. The adviser summary’s placeholder mentions the SOA; the document does not read it.
What reaches the advice document and the engine
The figures on the Needs Analysis and Gap Analysis tabs are recalculated from the inputs each time the page loads and are not saved as figures.
The advice document’s insurance section, the compliance register’s “Insurance Needs” row and three cover-amount strategies read a separate needs analysis record with required and existing cover and the gap for life, TPD and income protection. At the time of writing no screen writes that record.
Two consequences follow from that. The life cover gap, TPD cover gap and income protection strategies cannot fire, because each needs that record to show a material gap: at least $100,000 for life or TPD, and at least $500 a month for income protection on an employed client with a salary. And the advice document’s insurance section shows policies and no needs table.
The SOA gate on insurance asks for a needs analysis record only when a strategy that states cover amounts (those same three) is active. A trauma review, an ownership-structure review, business expense cover or a stepped-versus-level comparison does not trip it.
The advice engine’s other insurance strategies read the policy record: type, cover amount, premium, ownership and whether the policy is in force. A lapsed policy is still real history there; only a removed one is gone.
Saving
If someone else saved this household’s analysis after you loaded it, your save is refused, the indicator reads “Changed elsewhere — not saved” and autosave stops. A save can also be refused because your browser sent no load time at all, usually an old copy of the page after a release; then the indicator reads “Save could not be checked — not saved” and nobody else has touched the analysis. In both cases Reload latest brings in the current version and starts autosave again; your unsaved edits are gone.
A save that succeeds but could not record a policy downstream says so in the status line, with the reason, rather than in a log you will never see.
Print Analysis prints the current tab as shown.
The client portal
Clients see published policies only: rows with the portal toggle on, that have not been removed, listed by type. They cannot edit them, and nothing from the needs analysis, gap or recommendation tabs is shown.