Life Insurance Cover

A quick look at some cover options when taking out life insurance

Life insurance cover is available in many shapes and sizes, depending on who is to be covered, whether you want a lump sum or continuing income at the end, and whether you’re looking for security or an investment/profit element.

Just like car insurance, where more than one driver can be covered, life insurance cover can be varied.

You can take out cover on yourself, of course, but you can also take out life insurance cover on other people, provided you can prove that you have a financial interest in their welfare. This obviously includes your spouse, but also includes business partners for example; or other members of your family.

Where multiple people are insured (for example a husband and wife) you can select a first-death payout which begins to pay benefits on the death of the first person in the partnership, or the (slightly bizarrely named) last-survivor policy, which pays out on the death of the last person in the partnership.

A good example of the way cover can be varied is a group of policies called family income benefit. This sort of policy is usually written on a joint basis, in other words income from the policy begins as soon as one partner dies. Furthermore, the term is usually specified to coincide with the age of majority of the youngest child in the family. Therefore, the policy is designed quite simply to cover the expenses of children in the event of the death of either partner. As you can imagine, depending on your ages and the ages of your children, the actual cost of life insurance cover with these policies can vary very widely indeed; and you pick and choose benefits and payout schedules on most policies to suit your requirements.