A Multiplicity of Life Insurance Quotes
If you’re looking around the insurance marketplace, the chances are that you will find a very wide range of different life insurance quotes.
This isn’t just a question of different prices but also widely different products and terminology – all of which may be described generally as ‘life insurance quotes’.
Fortunately, the position isn’t quite as complicated as it may appear to be at a first glance.
The first important distinction to make when trying to find your way around the options, is that life cover typically breaks down into two fundamental types of protection:
- whole life insurance (some forms of which may be called ‘life assurance’);
- term life insurance.
These two categories have a fundamental difference:
- life insurance quotes based upon term cover, will typically relate to cover that will exist for a specific period of your life (e.g. a 25 year policy covering the period of your mortgage);
- those quotations that relate to cover provided for your entire life – irrespective of how long you live.
The differences between the two types of cover are very significant and may appeal to different people facing different prospects.
Take, for example, an individual in their 30s who still has a heavy mortgage debt to run over many years of their life. They may wish to take out a term policy that will run over the same period as their mortgage and which would pay off their mortgage in the event of their premature death. The sum insured may be very substantial as a result.
At the end of the mortgage period, their insurance would lapse.
By contrast, someone in their 50s, who is approaching the end of their mortgage, may see things differently.
They may wish to take out cover that will provide financial assistance for their family after they die – however far in the future that may be. In that case, whole life insurance may be an option and perhaps they may choose a more modest sum insured to reflect the fact that they may have fewer major debts to cover off.
That would be whole life cover.
In both categories, there will be numerous sub-types of cover available.
For example, some term life insurance may be what’s called ‘level term’. In other words, the amount you pay for the policy and the amount it would pay out in the event of your death, remain fixed.
Other policies may offer ‘decreasing term’ – which essentially means that the amount the policy will pay out decreases over the term of the policy (typically seen when linked to a decreasing mortgage debt over time etc).
So, there may be many differences between life insurance quotes. Selecting the sort of insurance that may be suitable for you, may take a little thought.