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Benefits Beyond Work

Changes at Home

Experiencing Illness or Injury

An illness or injury can affect healthcare, income, workplace benefits, and the people who depend on you. Start by understanding the protection and resources already in place.

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What's changing

Here's what typically shifts.

Health events can create both immediate and longer-term financial consequences. The appropriate next step depends on existing healthcare, workplace benefits, personal insurance, household responsibilities, and the ability to work.

Who does it affect?

Who else could this change affect?

A health event for one person can change coverage, income, and responsibilities for several.

  • A spouse or partner, whose coverage or workload may change.
  • Children and other dependents covered under the same plan.
  • Caregivers who take on new responsibilities.
  • Household income and the people who rely on it.
  • Anyone whose healthcare coverage runs through the affected person.

What to consider

Start with what already exists.

Start with what already exists, not with what new coverage might be needed. New insurance cannot cover an event that has already occurred, so the first step is reviewing existing medical, short-term and long-term disability, accident, critical illness, cancer/specified-disease, hospital indemnity, workplace life, personal life, and leave-related benefits where applicable. Eligibility, leave rights, and benefit provisions are determined by the applicable plan, employer, and carrier — plan documents and administrators are authoritative.

  • Medical coverage currently in force.
  • Workplace benefits, including life and other voluntary coverage.
  • Workplace or personal short-term and long-term disability insurance.
  • Accident, critical illness, cancer/specified-disease, and hospital indemnity coverage already in force.
  • Leave-related benefits, where applicable.
  • Existing personal life insurance and other personal insurance already in place.
  • A spouse's or partner's workplace benefits.
  • Other existing household protection.
  • Beneficiary information across policies and accounts.

A life change doesn’t always mean you need new insurance.

What to consider next

Questions worth asking.

  • Healthcare

    What medical coverage exists today?

  • Workplace Benefits

    What health, disability, leave, life, voluntary, or other applicable workplace benefits may already exist?

  • Income Protection

    Could the illness or injury affect someone's ability to work, or the household's income?

  • Disability Coverage

    Does workplace or personal disability coverage already exist?

  • Household Needs

    Who depends on the affected person's income, benefits, caregiving, or other household responsibilities?

  • Protection & Beneficiaries

    Does the health event create a reason to review existing protection and beneficiary information?

Relevant solutions

Given what's changing, here's where we can help.

Healthcare and protection considerations come first. Retirement considerations can surface when the event affects retirement timing or retirement income, and Medicare matters only where it genuinely applies.

These are the areas that may deserve attention given what’s changing. You are not expected to work out which coverage applies to you from this list.

Get help from a Financial Relationship Manager

You shouldn't have to research benefits while you're recovering.

A Financial Relationship Manager can help you understand what your existing coverage may already provide, which decisions have deadlines, and what your household may need next.

A Financial Relationship Manager helps you understand what is changing and what may need attention — so you don't have to figure that out on your own first.

A Financial Relationship Manager is a relationship steward and coordinator. The role does not by itself make someone an investment adviser, financial planner, attorney, tax adviser, or estate-planning professional. When a need calls for one of those disciplines, the role is to help you get to the right professional — not to substitute for one.

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Life Change checklist

Illness or Injury Checklist

Separate medical coverage, income protection, supplemental benefits, and household follow-up.

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Related life changes

Changes that often arrive together.

Start with what you already have. Then identify what may need attention.

Tell us what's changing and we'll help you understand the existing benefits and household needs involved.

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