The Life Insurance Minefield
11th Feb 2017 |

The life insurance minefield, can leave you knee-jerking to the wrong deal. With new adverts constantly appearing and all this talk of switching, where’s the best place to start?

It’s confusing! Visit my bank, call my broker, go with my health, home, or car insurance provider, or Google online offers? So, just follow these 3 simple steps and you can’t go wrong, in navigating the life insurance minefield:

1. Know your stuff!

The best value and most popular form of life insurance is what’s known as term assurance. Term assurance is so-called because the price quoted covers you for a specific chosen period of time known as the policy term.

For your family protection life insurance, you need your cover to at least remain level, or you can choose indexation, to increase it against inflation.

You can choose a cover term right up to age 90, while it makes sense to at least cover yourself up to your retirement age, as it’s during this time, the loss of your income would have the biggest effect on your family’s financial security.

Partners should also opt for joint cover to clear the outstanding loan on either death for mortgage protection, but dual cover is the smart choice for family protection, as for very little extra, dual cover pays out on both persons not just on the first claim.

A final and very important option to be aware of when choosing family protection life insurance is something called a continuation option.

You will need a smaller level of life cover after retirement albeit that your mortgage is cleared and your dependents have flown the nest. Even just for funeral cover buying this cover when your young and healthy makes sense and is much cheaper.

A continuation option allows you to continue and if you want to reduce your coverage beyond the original policy term and without having to answer and fresh medical questions at the time of converting.

2. Compare for best cover !

The first and smartest thing to do is to compare the market and the good news is that this is done for you online.

But just because a website produces an online quote, it does not mean it’s the best cover product or the best-priced cover.

So, make sure the website is a broker website that’s not just providing just one provider’s quotes. It not obvious click on their terms of business.

Websites that only offer only 1 product provider:

• VHI
• Laya
• 123.ie

3. Discount for best price!

Now you realise that only a broker website fully compares the market to get you the best cover, you will also be glad to know you can get this best cover at a price that beats even more basic cover options.

However, to get the best price from an online broker, don’t automatically opt for the big brand names, as they know they can get away with not allowing discounts e.g. Chill.ie

In Summary

All financial brokers compare the market and are duty-bound to provide life insurance policies that suit your needs, however, high street brokers don’t tend to offer any discount, whereas several online brokers do.

So, if opting to go online, the best thing to do is to Google what you’re looking for example Life Insurance Quotes and then go and run quotes on a few chosen broker websites.

The Onequote.ie option

Onequote.ie has just launched a digitally responsive website, developed around our slogan “Life made simple”, with unique how-to videos, the best price guarantee, live on-site chat and easy on-line application.

We are committed to making understanding life insurance simple and to providing all consumers, with the very best and most suitable protection at the lowest possible price.

Life Insurance is now more affordable than you think! Get your quick quote