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.
Dyspeptics - Your sufferings have not been in vain!
Life insurers used to routinely decline to pay out claims on grounds that the insured was a chronic dyspepsia patient? No? Here's more.Savita Nathawat
13 May 2008
In a mad-rush world where you are trying your hardest to keep fit because you need to get up the next day to go to work, when work becomes the point of existence, a mad scramble to meet the next EMI payment, providing for the family, and putting something resembling a nest egg for your golden years,... you could be forgiven for the more than occasional attack of dyspepsia, couldn't you?
Not according to life insurance companies.
Life insurers routinely decline to pay out claims on grounds that the insured was a chronic dyspepsia patient.
That gravy train is no longer available to insurers.
The National Consumer Commission has held that dyspepsia - indigestion characterized by stomach pain, discomfort, heartburn, and nausea often following a meal - is not a disease in itself. Therefore, no insurance company can deny the sum assured to a nominee on grounds of non-disclosure of pre-existing illness/disease.
The ruling came in connection with the following case:
Kanti Kumar had bought a life insurance policy with a quarterly premium of Rs 1,404 in March, 1992. He died in 1997. His widow, Chandra Kant Lohande filed a claim with the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) but LIC denied the assured sum to the widow, saying that he was a chronic patient of dyspepsia.
Reviewing a petition filed by LIC against a Madhya Pradesh State Commission order, Justice M. B. Shah, head of the apex consumer panel, directed LIC to pay the sum assured of Rs. 50000 to Chandra Kant Lohande. According to the Justice, "In today's world, people face problems like acidity, indigestion, back pain and head ache, which are sometimes chronic in nature. They cannot be considered as diseases, which require to be enumerated while answering questionnaire of the LIC in its proposal form."