Life Insurance

One of the most well-known types of insurance product is life insurance. And this does very much what it says on the tin - it insures against the life of a person.

Thus, if the policy holder (the one that takes out the life insurance product) dies, then the insurer (the company that provides the insurance) pays a specified benificiary the relevant sum of money.

There are occasions, depending on the type of policy taken out, where other circumstances can lead to a payout on a life insurance policy as opposed to death. These can include events such as being critically ill or terminally ill.

There are some reasons that people might feel uncomfortable or uncertain when considering life insurance. The first is simply that most people do not particularly like to think about their own mortality - it is not the most cheery thing to consider your own death and what would happen afterwards. Therefore many do not like to think about such things. The second issue that some wonder is that, if they are dead, then what does it matter what happens afterwards? Well, for anyone with a family, relations and/or loved one, the purpose of life insurance is peace of mind whilst alive that, in the event of death, then there will be suitable financial cover for those relatives and loved ones.

As with any insurance product, there will be a lot of detail to the actual cover and so anyone taking out life insurance will need to consider carefully what type of life insurance policy they require. Insurers will specify what is and isn't covered under a life insurance policy - for instance claims relating to matters such as suicide.

The way in which the sum of money is dispensed upon a claim varies from country to country; typically the money from a life policy would be included in the estate for inheritance tax purposes, although policies could be in trust and hence possibly outside of an estate.

With regard to the cost of insurance, there are a range of factors that are typically taken into account with regard to life insurance policies. These factors can include age, gender, where a person lives and whether the person taking out the policy smokes or not, together with information on a person's health and indeed also their family health history (such as whether there is history of early-onset conditions such as diabetes in the family).

There are a huge number of providers of life insurance and so a good way to get a feel for costs is simply to use some online comparison sites in the country you live in and get a feel for costs as a result and the specific types of cover available (eg life, critical illness, mortgage and critical illness) and so forth.

Related Articles...

Pet Insurance People love their pets - whether you are a cat lover or a dog lover, or prefer something like a rabbit, a guineapig, snakes, hamsters or indeed any animal that you can think of, then pet insurance... Contents Insurance Contents insurance is a type of insurance product that covers the items that you have - the contents - of your home. There are a range of different providers of contents insurance out there on... Travel Insurance One of the most common forms of insurance product is travel insurance. Wherever there is travel involved, there is invariably risk, and infact a range of risks, and therefore an insurance product... Agricultural Insurance Agricultural insurance is a niche type of insurance product that is available for those who work in specific areas of agriculture. This type of product could offer piece of mind against various... Property Insurance Property insurance is a product that applies specifically to property, and has various different types of specific that are subsets of the general umbrella term 'property insurance'. Specific... Prize Indemnity Insurance Prize indemnity insurance is a purchase that would be considered by someone offering a large prize and thus could stand to lose a considerable sum of money. This form of insurance would mean that... Flood Insurance Flood insurance is a specific product under the umbrella of insurance and it covers - as the name suggests - losses that occur due to flooding. In many cases, this form of protection (flood... What Is Insurance? What exactly is insurance? It sounds like a very basic concept, but it is important to know what insurance is, in order to work out why insurance is so essential to modern-day activities, and why... Payment Protection Insurance Until a few years ago, not many people would have heard of Payment Protection Insurance, commonly referred to as PPI. Now it is almost inescapable, with TV adverts and text messages bombarding... Vehicle Insurance Vehicle insurance is the category of insurance products that cover, surprisingly enough, vehicles. These can be any sort of vehicle that you can think of, with of course the most common product...