This is a question often asked by clients, especially those with medical insurance.

Inflation loosely termed is the change in buying power $1 has today vs. a point in time in the past. The Reserve Bank is under instruction from the government to keep this in a band between 1% and 3% per annum.

The best lever for the Reserve Bank to use to manage this is the interest rate, which is why it gets a lot of focus.

Inflation rates help drive the decisions the Reserve Bank makes on interest rates. (In a very simplified way)

What does this really mean?

Let us start with what is BMI?

BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a medical tool used by the medical profession to assess someone's approximate body fat.

• BMI is a function of a person's height and weight. Doctors often use this in conjunction with a person’s waist measurement to get a more accurate understanding of how healthy a person's weight is.

I am guessing you would not be too happy to have your financial adviser measure you for your insurance application, so insurance companies only use height and weight.

Good question as most people struggle with an example of a disability that is not a trauma or an accident. A degenerative back condition is one, no event as such so not ACC. Though there is another, I have seen which was more surprising.

Who would have thought a change in regular management medication would result in not being able to work? Well it can happen, not only once but a recent clients father has had a similar experience too and the similarities are quite surprising. Let’s just call them both Peter.

Let us say you are a builder and you take a tumble off the roof on a job and break your pelvis. (There have been one or two of these situations, it does happen) You are carted away in an ambulance to emergency and they patch you up.

You are now looking at 12-13 weeks for recovery. You will need assistance for things you never thought you would, nor will you like it much.

After 7 days, ACC will be paying to replace 80% of you provable tax assessable income, which is also tax assessable, and you are still lying in a hospital bed. At this stage of the game, you are starting to do your head in and depression is a real risk for you.

There are a number of ways to insure babies and children. Let us start at the beginning, pregnancy and conception.

In New Zealand currently, assistance with conception is limited to what is publicly funded. Private medical insurance does not cover conception issues; it can cover some pregnancy issues though.

What can you have covered once you are pregnant?

The public system is well equipped for dealing with pregnancy. It is unlikely you will need additional assistance that requires funding if you have a normal pregnancy.

If you do have complications with your pregnancy, then there are provisions under most medical insurance policies specialists and tests benefits to assist with private specialist costs. What you do need to consider are the finer points of the policy, this is where your adviser comes in.

The newspaper is full of timely reminders and this article is one of them. We are getting to 12 months in on the new home insurance approach of insuring for the rebuild value. It would appear that the vast majority are in for a shock when they have a loss to the house and they hear what it's going to cost to rebuild.

From the major insurers in the country the news isn't pretty. 60-75% of people took the rebuild value number on their insurance at the last renewal and just ran with it. Of the other 25-40% of people who did look at it and change it, 90% increased their cover.

The claims comment in the article would also suggest those who increased their coverage are the ones who probably have it right.

From time to time, I hear key staff from insurance companies speak at training and development sessions I attend. A recent one I heard from a key person in charge of operations. This person oversees both the underwriting (your application) and claims (where you get paid)

What was interesting to hear was the statement ‘Where there is adviser guidance with the application; the client generally has a better outcome at claim.’

Two medical insurers have changed or added to their products this month. NIB the insurer who took over Tower Medical last year and the largest medical insurer in the New Zealand market, Southern Cross.

So what have they done?

If you are familiar with Tower Medical they had Premier Health and Easy Health in their product range. NIB have added Basic, Mid, Ultimate and Ultimate Max policy options to their mix. Making it both more flexible in building the medical insurance products for you but also making it more complex to understand the nuances of the different policies, which is where we as advisers come in.

This is an area of health care often mis-understood until you are in the thick of your treatment and you find out things may not be as you expected.

Pharmac is the governments answer to managing health care costs and getting the best deal for New Zealanders health care dollar. The challenge is that health care dollar, which is funded from your taxes, only goes so far.

Willowgrove Consulting was established in January 2012 by Jon-Paul (J-P).

J-P enjoys travelling, the Willowgrove name comes from visiting Sausalito in San Francisco.

• Sausalito is Italian for small Willow Grove. Willowgrove Consulting was established initially to operate as a trading company for J-P's insurance and financial services base.
• Its purpose was to develop sales and sales management tools and operate an insurance advisory service through another company J-P was associated with.

Something which is often kicked around by financial advisers is private education, sort of meaning: if something happened to you, your kids would go/move to private education from public education.

Now this may be a wish you have but the practical reality is your kids have had a significant change with the loss or disability of a parent. Why would you inflict more change on them by pulling them away from their friends and stable routine to send them to private schooling? Sounds like a great way of scarring them for life at a vulnerable time.

One simple reason; your risk situation changes. Surprisingly so. I have found many situations where what was covered and covered reasonably well, is not only months later.

For example, a new client I was talking to had a cover that was only a few months old. The situation had changed quite quickly following a relationship break up, quite a bit of debt had been taken on as a result. The life cover taken was no longer sufficient to cover this and the repayment insurance they had, now has a significant shortfall.

Another client after reviewing their situation, a month later comes back. Oh yes, by the way, we have bought an investment property and effectively doubled our mortgage. Quite a change in risk there too.

Life’s full of surprises though life cover insurance is usually a subject you do not get surprises in. Sovereign’s 2013 published causes for life claims, or rather reasons people died, makes for surprising reading.

In the graph from Sovereigns claims for the year ending 30 June 2013, The 70 plus age group isn’t surprising, cancer, heart or lungs are usual reasons people pass away. The first usually causing one of the second or third.

Stepping back from the older lives, things get a little different.