How to arrange your life insurance and critical illness policies in order to best protect your family ?
You can make a good start by taking out life insurance and critical illness protection when you are fit and healthy to obtain the possible price from the life insurance companies.
Always arrange your life and critical illness cover on a separately insured basis, that means that you should arrange to be insured on a single life basis for one type of insurance.
Ignore the salesman who may suggest that you take out a joint life insurance with your partner as you will end up paying twice for one benefit.
Also ignore a salesman who suggests you combine both life insurance and critical illness insurance under one policy, as once again you are paying for two different types of insurance cover but almost invariable the life company will only pay out on one either the life insurance or the critical illness.
Now it is often suggested that if you are a young couple joint life insurance is a good idea as it is generally “cheaper”. At a young age you can buy life insurance for “pennies in the pound” – you should buy the maximum amount of insurance you are able (within reason) on a single life basis.
What are the advantages of single life insurance or single life critical illness insurance ?
If you have a joint life insurance, what do you do if your relationship fails and you split up ? Most people simply cancel their policies and start over, that is fine if you are still insurable but what if one of you has developed an illness that may mean you will have to pay premiums a lot higher than before.
If you have a joint insurance and your partner dies, you are left with a similar dilemma.
The other reason to take out single cover is that you can buy considerably more protection than with a joint life or critical illness policy.
What if you have existing life insurances ?
It may be news to you but insurance companies have been reducing their premiums dramatically over the years.
That means that in many cases not only can you improve the level of protection for a family but often at an improved cost.
For further tips on arranging protection policies look out for our next blog……
