Life Insurance Quotes And The Average Cost

People who are looking to purchase life insurance should get life insurance quotes online to determine the average cost or price. Some people have the concern of how much does life insurance cost. And the best way to deal with this is to get an online quote and compare it with the different life insurance companies. With the recent developments regarding the insurance industry, it is a must to know the financial soundness and stability of the company. A highly rank company would be a choice to inquire from.

The largest company in the industry can also go down the tubes thus it is more important to know high they rank and their financial status. You would like that these life insurance companies would be there when you are no longer there. Simply put, these companies should be around to pay the death benefits when your beneficiaries need them.
But the main concern that most people have is the average cost or price of getting insured. When one is in the market for policy coverage, you would like to know the average cost or price to determine what your range is going to be. Knowing the average cost will give you the tools needed to make a sound decision on what type of insurance you are going to purchase. The thing you can use in this strategy is to get life insurance quotes and compare it amongst the many insurers you inquired from.
Life insurance quotes can easily be access online. An online quote will give you a lot of choices. You can make calculations according to your age, gender, health, occupation and height and weight ratios. You can calculate it making different scenarios in order to have many different possible options when negotiating with your insurer. Not all insurers have the same price or cost even for the same type of insuring. These insurers have their own policies and guidelines in underwriting so their premiums will never be the same.
Because of the accessibility and ease in finding and getting quotes online, this the preferable way of understanding the average cost of insuring. Knowing what is the average cost of life insurance is a concern which can be easily known through life insurance quotes. There are so many ways of using these quotes online. This includes the imputing different number of years if you are planning a term life. It will calculate for you the possible premiums that you will be paying for any hypothetical specified period of time. And to access this quote calculators are almost always free and with no obligation.
If you are one of those who are concerned about the how much does life insurance cost, you need not worry about it. With so many websites that offer these services for free, there is no reason for you to be concerned. Life insurance quotes can give you the average cost or price that you will give the needed projections of your possible monthly premiums. Compare the results you got from the life insurance quotes and make that right decision when buying policy coverage. But the bottom line is purchase the one that suits your needs and budget.

by Shellaine Enfesta

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Take care when using price comparison sites

Price comparison websites have really taken off in a big way. Consumer magazine Which? reckons that around 6.5m of us visited one of the largest three sites - moneysupermarket.com, gocompare.com and confused.com – in April alone.
And small wonder. The sales pitch for comparison sites is simple and compelling. Why waste hours phoning round different insurance providers, when you can give your details to a website once and it will instantly find you the cheapest quote?

It's a lucrative business too. The three main sites lavished a cool £40m on advertising in 2007. And although the credit crunch has battered its share price down to about 80p today, at last summer's flotation price of £1.70, Moneysupermarket.com alone was valued at an eye-popping £1bn.
But are you getting the best deals?
The worry is that, popular as they are, these sites don't always live up to expectations. For example, a recent report by the Financial Services Authority threw up some general criticisms that such sites don't always display information "clearly, fairly and accurately".
Which? has launched its own investigation, covering home contents, car, and travel insurance, plus personal loans and credit cards. The magazine's editor Martyn Hocking concluded that "you might be very confused to find that different sites can give you vastly different quotes and often don't give enough information for you to make an informed choice". He also warned that "cheapest isn't always best – it's a false economy if you don't get enough cover for your needs or have to pay a huge excess if you claim".
Specifically, Which? turned up the following problems;
1. The cheapest quotes were different on each site.
2. Different sites sometimes gave different quotes for the same insurer.
3. The cheapest quotes sometime omitted important cover.
4. The level of policy details offered by the sites varied.
The best way to use the sites
So what should you do? Well, the fact that there are some potential pitfalls to using comparison sites shouldn't be a big surprise. The basic rule when buying anything, including insurance, is that there is no free lunch. You need to do some work to get the best deal. But that doesn't mean you should abandon them altogether.
Haggle with your existing insurer: Price comparison sites are a reasonable starting point. But many receive payments from at least some of the companies they recommend, so they will not necessarily be impartial. The Resolution Foundation has criticised some sites for not always being "clear about the financial relationships they have with the companies featured in their search results", reports Which?
So by all means seek a quote from at least one site, but then use it to haggle down the cost of your policy with your existing insurer first. Or, if you are fed up with your existing insurer, then use quotes from these sites as a starting point for direct price negotiations with another insurer, not as a short cut to avoid legwork.
Know exactly what you are paying for: As with builders or electricians, be wary of simply accepting the cheapest insurance quote. It is vital to get the cover right and comparison sites sometimes throw up policies with exclusions you may later regret accepting.
Which? advises particular caution when it comes to buying medical policies especially if you have a pre-existing condition – a classic exclusion on many plans. In short, know exactly what you are buying, even if reading the policy document, or asking for an explanation, is a bit tedious.
No site covers every insurer: Although comparison sites are useful in terms of scanning several insurance providers, they don't cover absolutely all of them, so you may miss out on the cheapest quote. Direct Line, for example refuses to be connected.
On top of this, different sites may cover different insurers, hence the problem of different "best quotes". And just to add to the potential confusion, the Which? "top three" face increasing competition from other, newer, sites such as tescocompare.com. Soon we might even need a site that ranks the price comparison sites themselves!
Other tips for lowering the cost of insurance
You can also bring down the cost of insurance whether you use a price comparison site or not. First off, think about how much cover you need – or whether you even need it at all. For example, although comprehensive car insurance gives you the greatest peace of mind, if you are a careful driver, live in a safe area and perhaps use a car infrequently, "third party fire and theft" may suffice.
On any policy where you have a low claims history, consider raising the "excess" - the fixed amount of any claim that you are responsible for – as this can bring down the premium too.
Also check when it comes to, say, basic travel insurance that you are not already adequately covered by another policy, either through work or perhaps even by your credit card company or bank who may offer basic cover with certain accounts or products.
Once you've got the right policy, it's often best to pay for your cover up front if you have the cash available, as you may be charged interest for paying monthly instead.
Finally, it's rarely worth claiming for small amounts on, say, your car insurance policy. Stump up for a simple repair yourself rather than register a claim with your insurer, which will push up your premium when it comes to renewing the policy.

By Associate Editor Tim Bennett

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Should you take out private health insurance ?

We hear so often these days that the NHS is dreadful, that most of us are slowly becoming convinced, if we can afford it, that we should take out private medical insurance (PMI). But should we ?

For starters, note that medical insurance doesn't cover the conditions most of us need treatment for. It doesn't cover childbirth (not even emergency Caesareans), it often doesn't cover depression and it also very often doesn't cover chronic or

incurable illnesses such as diabetes, asthma or multiple sclerosis. It is also utterly useless in an emergency: private hospitals don't even have emergency rooms.
And anyway the NHS never makes you wait more than an hour or two to have a broken leg sorted out. The doctors you see privately will be the same ones you would have seen on the NHS anyway – they're just bumping up their incomes by going private – and NHS consultants are usually the ones at the cutting edge of healthcare.And it isn't cheap either. A 30-something man or woman would be lucky to get cover for less than £30 a week. At that price it would come with so many exemptions you'd have to be nearly dead before you could claim on it. You'd need to be spending more like £70 a month to be sure of getting anything remotely comprehensive. On the plus side, having good insurance does mean that you'll get treated fast; that you'll have some choice about who treats you and where; and, of course, that the hospitals you visit will be less dirty and less depressing than they might be otherwise.Start a Calamity Account instead
There is one more alternative: simply save all the cash you might have spent on insurance and then pay for any treatment you might need that you don't want to wait to have on the NHS.
This sounds frightening, but it shouldn't be. Let's not forget that you've already paid for the NHS via your taxes and that it really isn't that bad: it is generally accepted that in emergencies and in the care of people with serious or terminal illnesses the organisation does a good job of providing comprehensive medical care. Where the NHS more often falls down is on the treatment of acute but curable conditions; but if you are saving you should be able to pay for this yourself if you feel you need to. Note that 80% of these treatments are dealt with on an outpatient basis (blood tests, consultations, X-rays, scans and the like). These aren't particularly expensive. What are pricey, on the other hand, are mainly procedures that you won't need until you are heading for your 50s and 60s (hip replacements, for example), by which time your Calamity Account should be looking pretty healthy if you have regularly put £50-£100 a month into it instead of paying for insurance. A private hip replacement comes in at about £7,000, cataract removal at about £2,000 and a coronary artery bypass graft between £2,000 and £15,000.
Only 4% of private healthcare claims are for sums over £5,000. You could even combine self-insuring with buying a very high excess policy: if you agree to pay the first £5,000 of treatment you can cut the cost of a policy to a few pounds a month. That way you can build up your savings while retaining a sense of security, should something really horrible happen.

By MoneyWeek Editor Merryn Somerset Webb

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Don't be tempted by mortgage insurance

"Wouldn't it be great if you could insure your mortgage against a significant rise in interest rates?" asks Paul Farrow in The Daily Telegraph. Well, now you can, thanks to a new insurance product from MarketGuard. The policy is designed for anyone paying a standard variable or tracker rate, plus those who plan to do so once an existing fixed-rate deal terminates, provided the latter has less than three months remaining.

So, say I have a £150,000 variable rate repayment mortgage with 20 years left and have decided that I can afford an increase of 1.0% in both my mortgage interest rate and the Bank of England base rate (the "excess"), but would need insurance beyond that. A few clicks at Marketguard.com reveals that for £58 a month I can buy protection. Market¬guard will cover my extra costs should rates rise beyond current levels, plus 1.0%. Had I chosen an excess of 1.5%, this drops to £37 per month and just £16 per month if I pick 2.5%. Sounds great – if my variable rate falls I pay my mortgage provider less and if it rises, my exposure is capped via Marketguard.
However, most people would be better off without it. For starters, it's expensive to get the lowest 1% excess many nervous homeowners with big mortgages would want. Fifty-eight pounds per month is £1,392 over two years, which has to be paid up front for a full two-year term. And how many cash-strapped homeowners have that kind of money sitting around? And if you cancel you get nothing back, unless you act within the first 14 days, in which case you could lose up to an eye-watering 30% in "administration costs". There's also a question mark over how likely it is that your new policy will ever pay out.
Your premium only buys protection against a rate rise of, say, 1% or more if the rise occurs during the first two years, not the full term of your mortgage. Also should your mortgage lender increase their rate independently of the Bank of England – bear in mind that recently mortgage rates have tended to respond to changes in the London InterBank Offered Rate, rather than the base rate – the policy won't pay out until both rates breach the excess level. Finally, if you are risk-averse and want peace of mind about your monthly outgoings, the simpler and (provided you shop around using sites such as Moneyfacts.co.uk) cheaper solution in many cases will be a fixed-rate mortgage.
As the FT's Matthew Vincent notes, MarketGuard's insurance may be attractive to those on cheap "lifetime" tracker deals or buy-to-let investors anxious not to give up a good existing deal but wanting a cap in case rates rise. And, "if you can afford the premium, you can probably afford to handle a few rate increases anyway", says Farrow.


By Associate Editor Tim Bennett

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Could life assurance companies be ripping us off ?

Have you ever been mis-sold something by a financial services company? Odds are the answer is yes.
If you’ve ever taken out a loan you’ve probably been brow-beaten into taking out Payment Protection Insurance with it, despite the fact that this is – as Cliff D’Arcy of the Motley Fool puts it – “the worst insurance ever”.

If you took out a mortgage a decade ago you were probably mis-sold, or think you were mis-sold, an endowment policy. Add that to all the hideously inappropriate investment muck we’ve all had hoisted on us over the years and it’s no wonder that so many of us aren’t exactly enamoured of the industry.
But the most irritating thing about it is that it never seems to learn. Look at the Self Invested Personal Pension market. I love SIPPs, which allow you to buy a pension ‘wrapper’ and then invest your own pension assets as you see fit. I think they are one of the best innovations to come out of the often overly creative minds of the market for years.
But they aren’t for everyone. If you are never going to invest in anything except for the funds of one company for example, they are pointless. And if you have only a small pension, which you intend to keep in mainstream funds, you are likely to find you are better off with a stakeholder pension.
However, this isn’t stopping the life assurance companies having a go: they are paying hefty commissions (up to 15%, says The Scotsman!) to advisers to transfer customers out of old-fashioned pensions into their SIPPs and then – this is the good bit – having them buy their funds with the SIPPs. Friends Provident, says the FT, requires its SIPP holders to invest £20,000 in its insured funds. Does this make sense? The FSA isn’t so sure: it is conducting an inquiry into the sales of SIPPs by financial advisers.

By MoneyWeek Editor Merryn Somerset Webb

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