The 20-minute new-year cover check-up

January’s resolution list has a personality type: gym, budget, less screen time, and somewhere near the bottom, “sort insurance”, written in the same hopeful handwriting as last year. The reason it never gets done is that “sort insurance” is a project with no edges, so it loses every time to tasks that fit inside an afternoon. Laziness has nothing to do with it.

So here’s the fix: shrink it until it fits inside twenty minutes. This is the check-up that tells you whether a deep review of your cover is needed, not the review itself. Five steps, one coffee, and you’ll know more about your own protection than most people ever do. Timer on.

The five steps

Step 1: List everything you hold (5 minutes)

You can’t check what you can’t see. On one page, note every place insurance might be living: each super account (myGov linked to the ATO will surface funds you’ve forgotten), any policies in your own name, and anything through work. Most households discover the list is shorter than they feared or longer than they knew, and both discoveries are useful.

Step 2: Note what each one actually is (5 minutes)

Next to each entry, write three things from the statement or portal: the cover types (death, TPD, income protection, trauma), the cover amounts, and what it costs. For super cover, the cost is coming out of your balance, which is exactly why you’ve never felt it. If a statement shows no insurance section at all, write “none”, that’s a finding, not a failure of the exercise.

Step 3: Spot-check the two details that decide claims (4 minutes)

You’re not reading whole PDS documents today. You’re checking two things. For any TPD cover: which definition, own occupation or any occupation? (Super TPD typically uses the stricter, any-occupation style.) For any income protection: what’s the waiting period, and could your leave plus savings honestly bridge it? Jot both down, even if the answer is “couldn’t find it”, because that’s your first question for the fund.

Step 4: Flag what changed last year (3 minutes)

Insurance drifts because life moves and policies don’t. Scan the last twelve months for the events that matter: new mortgage or a big change to one, new child, marriage or separation, job change or going out on your own, big income shift, paid-off debts. Each flag is a place where cover set in a previous life may no longer fit this one, in either direction, too little, or paying for more than your situation now carries.

While you’re here, cast one eye forward too. If this year holds a settlement date, a due date or a resignation letter, note it, because those are the moments when the questions in this check-up stop being hypothetical, and it’s far easier to think about them from the January couch than from the middle of the event itself.

Step 5: Decide, honestly, what happens next (3 minutes)

Look at the page. Three outcomes are possible, and all three are wins:

1. Everything lines up. Cover exists, amounts roughly track your obligations, definitions are known, nothing major changed. File the page, see you next January.
2. Small unknowns. A missing definition, an unclear waiting period. That’s one email or call to the fund, put it in the diary for this week.
3. Real flags. Life changed and the cover didn’t, cover you thought existed doesn’t, or you genuinely can’t tell what you’re holding. That’s when the twenty-minute check-up hands over to a proper review.

What’s the catch with a quick check?

Worth being straight about: twenty minutes tells you where you stand, not what to do. This check-up is a smoke alarm, not a fire plan. It’s brilliant at surfacing gaps and mismatches, and completely unqualified to resolve them, because resolving them depends on your full situation, which is personal-advice territory. The failure mode to avoid is the panic move: cancelling something at step 5 because the premium annoyed you, before understanding what the cover does. Findings first, decisions properly, and never from the kitchen bench at 9pm.

The quiet second catch: the check-up only works if it recurs. One January is a snapshot; every January is a system. Put a recurring reminder in the phone now, while the coffee’s still warm.

Where to from here

If your page came back all green, genuinely, well done, enjoy the smugness through at least February. If it came back with flags, or with more question marks than answers, that’s exactly what a no-obligation chat with Justin is for. Bring the page. Twenty minutes of your homework makes the conversation twice as useful, and if the flags turn out to be nothing, he’ll tell you that too.

Related reading

• Reviewing your existing cover
• Insurance in super, explained
• Insurance documents explained

General advice only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs. Consider whether it is appropriate for you and read the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) before deciding. Whether a benefit is payable depends on the specific policy terms.