A life insurance cover helps you secure the financial future of everyone dependent on your income in the event of your death. Nobody can help overcome the loss of a dear one, but imagine that along with this loss the surviving members of the family are hard-pressed to maintain their lifestyles because they were partially or fully dependent on the income of the deceased. Getting an adequate life cover is absolutely essential if the sum of the total value of your assets (other than the home you stay in) less your total liabilities (including any home loan, car loan or personal loan you might have outstanding) is less than 150 times your current monthly expenses. The shortfall would be the recommended amount of life cover you should seek. At ApnaPaisa, we help you reach out to a maximum of 5 service providers who will propose alternative plans that you can compare based on:

Life Cover (also known as Sum Assured)
Annual Premium
Additional Riders Offered

Often customers get lured into combining their life cover requirements with an investment objective. We do not recommend this approach because it is always a lot more affordable to opt for a term insurance policy and invest the savings on the annual premium into any savings instrument of your choice - be it PPF, Fixed Deposits, Mutual Funds or even shares.

Dos and Don'ts while buying life insurance

Read onn to know the do's and dont's of buying life insurance.

Apnainsurance.com Research Bureau

20 Dec 2007

Assess your life insurance requirements.
Research on various types of life insurance plans, additional benefits, or riders. Also ensure that you compare similar plans across the various insurance companies.
Understand the extent of life insurance cover, the exclusions for the insurance plan, AND the riders that you select.
Fill the insurance proposal form yourself.
DO NOT provide your agent with a signed, blank form.
Be truthful when filling the form as you or your nominee could lose the benefits from the policy in case you misrepresent facts.

Do not misrepresent any facts - be it regarding your age, health, family history, etc. Never alter medical facts as it can make the entire policy null and void. Your insurance agent might advise you to misrepresent medical facts to help reduce your premium cost. This is not a smart thing to do - in the event of a claim, more often than not, the misrepresented facts will come up and go against your family.

Let us look at an example that can very easily happen to any one of us: Suppose you conceal the fact that you are a diabetic when you fill your insurance form. After a while, you undergo heart surgery and choose to make a claim under your critical illness rider. The first thing the insurance company will do is ask for your medical records from your doctor/surgeon - only to find out that you had diabetes AT the time of purchasing the insurance policy. The company will refuse to make any payments towards your claim even if the two diseases are unrelated. This is for a critical illness rider where the cost of the rider does not even exceed 30 per cent of the total premium cost. Now, imagine in case of your death - your premium payments become a total waste. More importantly, your family will not receive any proceeds from the policy.