Mortgage Life Insurance

The policy which protects your lender in the event of your untimely death before the mortgage is paid off.

Mortgage life insurance is a subset of policies called decreasing term insurance, because the amount covered gets smaller as the policy wears on. You might also consider a low-cost endowment policy, which reduces repayments still further by investing in an endowment policy on the side.

Mortgage life insurance is essential- indeed most companies won’t let you have a mortgage without it. It protects the loan, so that if you were to die during the term of the mortgage, the policy will pay off the debt. Now, because as the years go by, the mortgage decreases; similarly the amount of life cover you need to pay it off decreases. Mortgage life insurance is therefore a decreasing term policy- it covers less year on year, and is therefore correspondingly fairly cheap to obtain.

One variation on the theme is the use of a low-cost endowment policy: this is a combination of a decreasing term policy and an endowment. In this instance, the decreasing term cover decreases even faster- the suggestion is that the growth in the endowment policy will make up the difference. The addition of bonuses (a key part of an endowment policy) means that it ought to match the mortgage, and perhaps even outgrow it to generate a small profit. These endowment mortgage life insurance policies offer the option to pay lower premiums at the start of a policy, which is very useful for perhaps younger people who have used all their savings in obtaining the deposit on their property, and need a few years with minimal outgoings. But there is an element of risk involved- endowments are an investment, and their value can fluctuate. As such, if you’re adventurous they’re a good idea; but for the sake of what will only be few pounds per £100k covered you might prefer the straight decreasing term option.