Life Insurance Search

With the aid of the internet, it is possible these days to get any number of life insurance quotes by completing a handful of details and with just one click of the mouse. The real trick comes, therefore, not just in getting your life insurance quotes but in arriving at a useful and meaningful comparison. 

In essence, therefore, a meaningful comparison of life insurance quotes is a question of deciding on what purpose your life cover is intended to serve and, having made your choice about the type of product you need, then comparing like with like. Here are a few of the pointers to help you decide:  

Income replacement – if you are the family’s principal breadwinner, your reason for buying life insurance is likely to be the wish to ensure that your dependents continue to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in the event of your death. In this instance, you will be looking to provide either a lump sum benefit (subsequently invested to provide a regular income) or a family income benefit to replace at least a proportion of what you were earning. The level of cover (i.e. the amount of benefit) you choose will, of course, determine the premium you pay;  

Mortgage repayment – most people would want to ensure that, at the barest minimum, Life insurance cover will pay off the mortgage. Indeed, many mortgage lenders will make it a condition of granting the loan that mortgage life insurance is taken out;  

Education – if you have children, you will probably want to ensure that their educational opportunities do not suffer in the event of your death. If they are being privately educated, you would want a life insurance plan that covered those school fees; if they are at, or plan to go on to, university, you will probably want to ensure that there is sufficient financial provision for those plans to proceed;   

Childcare – younger families will know only too well the time, effort and expense that goes into caring for children. The death of the parent responsible for providing that care may well lead to considerable additional expense on childcare;  

Written in trust – it is important to ensure that the policy you choose and the life insurance quotes you compare are ones that allow the policy to be “written in trust”. This is a legal formulation for ensuring that any benefits under your life insurance cover are paid directly to the named beneficiaries as swiftly and as smoothly as possible. In this way, the beneficiaries are also relieved of the obligation to pay inheritance tax (a potential saving of up to 40%);  

Joint life insurance – if you are married, you might wish to consider joint life insurance that pays out in the event of either yourself or your spouse (which ever is first). Although this will save money initially, it is important to remember that, in the event of the first death, the surviving spouse would then need to take out their own, new life insurance cover;  

Critical or terminal illness insurance? – most life insurance policies include terminal illness cover as a matter of course (where benefits are payable in the event of the policy holder’s terminal illness and anticipated death within 12 months). However, many policies also offer a combined life insurance and critical illness insurance at a much cheaper rate than buying two separate policies. Critical illness insurance benefits become payable as a lump sum in the event of the policyholder being diagnosed with a number of critical illnesses, without the anticipation of any specified early death. 

To summarise, as any quick search of the internet will tell you, there is an amazing range of life insurance products on the market. In order to make meaningful comparisons, it will be necessary to decide on: 

• Some of the basic purposes for which your life insurance cover is intended; and
• Any additional features which you want your life insurance cover to include. 

The article above has been written by Mick Quinn.

This article does not represent ‘financial advice’ as each person’s individual requirements will be unique to their needs. If there is something in the article which you decide to rely on, then make sure you check those details with the person from whom you purchase any product or service.

The views in this article represent those of the author and not those of Netbasic Limited.