TPD Super Claims

TPD is short for Total Permanent Disability. It is a monetary lump sum benefit that is usually attached to your superannuation.

Broadly speaking, TPD insurance is there to pay you a lump sum if your health makes you stop working.

It’s designed for when you have had an illness or an injury that’s forced you to stop working, and the doctor thinks it’s unlikely you’ll be able to work again in future.

It’s given to almost all Aussie workers by their super fund, and paid for through fees taken from their super account over time.

It’s worth about $50,000 to $200,000 for most people.

Almost everyone receiving employer contributions to their super has default TPD insurance.

Default insurance is insurance that’s activated automatically unless you say no.

It’s not “opt-in”, it’s “opt-out”. So if you don’t say no to it, they’ll provide it for you and charge you for it.

Every super fund has what’s called a Product Disclosure Statement, or PDS. In this document, there is a large amount of information, which makes the document unreadable for most people. It’s in there that the fund tells you what insurance they will automatically put on your account.

Your super account is charged a fee every month, and some of that is usually insurance. The super funds make billions of dollars charging everyday Australians for this cover, and most do not know they have it. Sadly, this means the insurer often gets to keep their money even if they develop a health issue and can’t work.

Luckily, we can protect you by checking this insurance entitlement for you for free.

Nothing! Our searches for your TPD insurance entitlements are completely free – always. Free of charge, and obligation-free.

If you’re hurt and out of work in a way that meets your insurance policy requirements, quite a lot. If we find TPD insurance and you’re entitled to claim it, you get the lump sum when the lawyer wins, less fees you’ve agreed to pay once you win.
Most default TPD insurances are worth around $50,000 to $200,000.

If we find insurance and offer to claim it for you, you can choose to sign a no-win, no-fee cost agreement with us to do this work for you. We will outline any costs that are invoiced, including our professional fees, and disbursements, which are things we purchase on your behalf from other parties to help with your claim. Usually, the majority of disbursement costs come in the form of medical reports.

Estimated costs

Most importantly: if we don't win, you don't pay. No tricks, no exceptions.

As for actual cost: without knowing the details of your matter, it's hard to say, but we can provide broad estimates.

For conventional claims that do not involve pursuing an insurer in court, which is rare for insured amounts under $500,000, we charge between $12,000 and $30,000 worth of legal professional fees. This is a large range - just as different TPD claims require vastly different amounts of work.

As for moving forward and having us claim your TPD insurance, every claim is a little different. Therefore each fee is a little different. Because we can’t quote you a firm fee up front, we also do not ask you to make a commitment to claim, or even continue investigating if you change your mind. (You shouldn’t though – the investigation is free - always!)

If you haven’t been told what something costs, you aren’t obligated to allow the legal team to do it for you.

If we are unable to claim your insurance, you pay nothing. That means you do not pay our professional fees, and you also are not obligated to pay for disbursements. This means if we purchase medical reports or have other outlays regarding your claim and then fail to win your claim, we absorb that cost.

Under no circumstances will we ask you to pay us any money for failing to win a claim for you.

Just because you received a payout from a TPD claim because you couldn’t work in your usual job doesn't mean you can't return to work in a different field.

For example, if you worked in hard labour and have a spinal injury, you might be well within your rights to discover a new occupation in an industry that is not hard on your back. Since COVID-19, there's been an increase in demand for food and grocery delivery services. Driving for companies like Uber has also become popular, offering flexible work schedules that can accommodate different physical abilities.

As a general rule of thumb, if you go back to work in the future, you’d want it to be for something different to what you’d done before. It’s really important to get professional advice when considering this, as different policies have different rules and they aren’t easy to read. Failing to understand your rights and obligations with professional advice can lead to an insurer asking you for money back if you work again.

Our TPD experts can talk you through this and make the process safe and painless.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of issues TPD looks after. These are mental health issues, progressive physical health issues, and acute injuries leading to lasting impairment.

We’ve assisted in claiming for everything from lumbar spine injuries, to fibromyalgia, to PTSD, and everything in between. 

Our investigation generally takes around 1 to 3 months. The biggest factor that changes how long this takes, is how long the insurer takes to respond to us. We can make things faster, but some insurers are quicker than others. If you have information handy about your super funds and your insurance, it will help us get a result for you more quickly.

If our legal team starts a TPD insurance claim for you, it usually takes around 6 to 9 months. After that, the lump sum is paid into our statutory trust account. We take out the fees and costs you have already agreed to at this point, and then give the rest to you.

Not during the initial free search process.

Once you go through to the claims process, you might have to. If we don't have enough medical evidence to satisfy that you have no reasonable capacity to return to work according to the terms of your policy, we might need to get additional reports from specialised medical professionals. You would have to see one of these people, but these can sometimes be done over the phone, depending on the nature of your condition.

The good news is that under our no-win-no-fee guarantee, even these doctor visits are paid for by the TPD expert doing your claim.

Also, if you’re one of the approximately 2% of people that aren’t successful in their claim, you do not pay for any doctors visits you were sent to.

This means there’s no risk.

If the TPD Expert wins your claim, the money is paid by the company that insures you. It doesn’t come out of your super balance, that's yours to keep.

The only change is that once you claim your TPD insurance from your super, your super account will no longer have TPD insurance attached to it, as you can only claim TPD once. You will generally not be able to claim another TPD insurance off super in the future for a different thing, as most TPD policies say they won’t let you claim if you’ve claimed TPD in the past for another issue.

Often, you gain access to your super balance when you win a TPD claim as well. But you can leave it there if you want.

Note: we aren’t financial advisors, and you shouldn’t rely on anything we say about financial stuff without getting professional advice.

No. We work with clients Australia-wide. Everything we do is completely remote friendly. All necessary information is gathered over the phone, documents can be signed digitally, or by post if required by an insurer or fund or by law, and we can verify your identity digitally as well.

Provided you are insured and meet the policy definition, absolutely!

It doesn’t matter if your health issue was caused by work, or something else. It only matters that your health issue is stopping you working.

There are some fiddly bits on this stuff in each insurance policy, so it’s best to ask us for a free check.

Provided you meet the TPD insurance policy requirements, our specialised lawyers should be able to claim it for you.

After our investigation is done and insurance is found, you’ll be offered the opportunity to do a no-win-no-fee claim of your TPD insurance through our specialised legal team. At this point, you’re told what the fixed fee will be when the solicitor wins your claim.

At the beginning of the claim, you agree to allow us to use some of the winnings to charge you the fixed fee. These funds are paid from the insurer into our trust account, and passed onto you less agreed fees and outlays. In the unlikely event the TPD Expert can’t claim your insurance money for you, you pay nothing. You pay no fees, and also do not pay any of the costs we incur by doing the search for you. Nothing at all.

If you go ahead with a TPD insurance claim and win, you’re charged the pre-agreed fees and disbursements/outlays.