ING New Zealand is part of the global ING Group – one of the world's largest financial services organisations.

In New Zealand, our objective is to help clients meet their financial objectives through the accumulation, investment and protection of assets.

Products and services offered include investments and savings, wholesale/institutional investment, management and life, disability and health insurance.

We believe health insurance is particularly important as health care services continue to become more sophisticated and expensive. In addition, as New Zealand’s population ages, the Government is unlikely to be able to afford to fully fund a public healthcare system that will provide the best medical care when we need it.

The Government’s inability to fully fund the breast cancer drug Herceptin has had a lot of media attention lately, but this is just one example where people who are ill have been forced to find tens of thousands of dollars to pay for life-saving treatment.

At ING Life we believe all of us should have access to the best possible treatment when we are sick. For this reason our medical insurance cover, unlike most others, does not limit drugs and treatments to those funded by the Government (PHARMAC). In addition, we believe that as long as our clients pay their premiums we should not be able to change their benefits without their permission (something other companies can do!). After all, don’t you want the certainty of knowing that what you are paying a premium for will be there for you when you need it?

At ING Life we also believe it is inefficient to ask someone else to pay our small medical bills as this simply forces premiums up too much. Accordingly, ING Life'smedical insurance does not cover regular visits to the doctor, optometrist or dentist, for instance. We believe that it is only necessary to insure the larger medical bills that come along from time to time and by doing this we are able to keep premiums as low as possible.

When it comes to serious ill-health however, we believe that clients should have access to very large amounts of money to pay for medical procedures. For this reason, our policy provides the following, very generous, benefit limits. We will pay up to:

We can also offer an additional, specialist and tests benefit, which pays for minor specialists visits and tests which don’t become more serious.

ING Life's medical cover also covers the costs of private medical expenses incurred in Australia (up to the reasonable and customary New Zealand costs for the same treatment).

One of the problems with health insurance is that just when you need it most (when you are elderly), the premiums start becoming expensive relative to income.

ING Life has the facility within our policy, for clients to put aside amounts of money today, so that as their balance grows they can subsidise or even pay for, their premiums in old age. Ask for details on how flexible this option is. Money saved in an ING Life policy is always immediately available to you should you need it for any reason.