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Level term life insurance does it exactly what it says on the tin: it covers your life for a fixed term. For example, you'll take out a policy that you'll regularly pay into for the next eighteen years and if you die during that time your beneficiaries will receive a lump sum.

It matters not if you die six months into the plan, or two days before it ends, the amount of money they'll receive will be exactly the same. The amount of money paid out isn't related to how much has been paid in by you; it won't go up as more and more gets paid in but will instead stay level, hence its title.

There are a number of factors that affect how much a level term life insurance policy will cost you each month. How much you want to pay out really is dependant on what level of cover you want and so you can very much tailor your monthly payments to what you can afford.

Bluntly put, if you're more likely to die then your monthly premium will be more expensive. That's obviously because the life insurance provider has to be able to balance their books in the event of your death.

So, if you're 65 years old, smoke like a trooper, drink a bottle of whiskey every night and bungee jump at weekends, you might have to fork out a fair bit. More, in any case, than a teetotal 25-year-old housewife who is obsessed with eating properly and goes to the gym every night.

Not surprisingly, the more you want your dependants to receive in the unfortunate event of your death, the higher your monthly payments will be. It's worth noting that any debts you leave behind may well swallow up the payout, so you should work out how much money really is needed in order to give your family a reasonable standard of living.

A general rule of thumb is that the shorter you want your policy to be, the less it's going to cost you. You need to decide what the purpose of the life insurance policy is in order to establish its length. For example, if you only want to ensure that your children are looked after, your policy should only be put in place until the time they leave full-time education. If, on the other hand, you're interested in covering the needs of your partner, it's probably best to make sure your policy runs until they reach pensionable age.

It's possible that you'll be required to undergo a quick medical whilst completing your level term life insurance application as, once again quite bluntly, the provider will want to establish how likely you are to die during the term of your policy.

If you're a smoker, your premium is likely to be more expensive so it's worth thinking about quitting if you want to pay a bit less. People who used to smoke but have stopped even as recently as a year ago, normally find that their monthly payments will be less than someone who still smokes.

Your premium could also be affected by the medical history of your family. If your grandparents and parents, for example, all contracted cancer your chances of being affected by it too are significantly increased. Therefore, your level term life insurance provider is likely to be wary of this and so bump the cost of your premium up slightly.

All that said, your medical exam is absolutely nothing to worry about and there won't be any uncomfortable prodding or poking! In fact, very few people who apply for a life insurance policy are actually asked to have a medical at all.

So there you go; that's really all there is to know about level term life insurance policies and how they work. If you're looking to ensure the financial welfare of your loved ones should the unthinkable happen to you, level term life insurance could be just what you need.

Here at Protected.co.uk you can compare over 300 level term plans by taking just a couple of minutes to fill in your details with our quick-and-easy form. For cheap life insurance policies, there's nowhere on the net like Protected.co.uk.

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