Life Insurance Quotes

[Rufus200]

Hi

I'm looking at getting life insurance but know nothing about it as no one is my family has it.

Can they increase your monthly premium, or are the quotes per month guaranteed for the entire 25 years? I don't want to sign up for £6 a month now and in 10 years time be told I need to pay £25 per month.

Looking at Zurich, Aviva and Legal & General. Any experience with any of these companies, any to avoid?

bump

You can choose guaranteed or reviewable. A common thing is RPI linked so the premiums will increase each year, but this is usually linked to an increase in the benefit too. Whether you want that feature depends on what the cover is for.

L and G, Scottish provident, bright grey, aviva all good to name a few.

If you choose a level term plan and guaranteed rates the sum assured stays the same and so does the monthly premium throughout the whole term of the plan.

If you choose reviewable rates, these tend to start off cheaper than the guaranteed rates but will be prone to increase over time as you fear.

If you are young, a non-smoker and in good health then L&G tend to come out cheapest on quotes in my experience. Zurich are not the absolute cheapest but do have a very good claims record (i.e. they look for reasons to pay out rather than some of the other companies that are more likely to quibble over small print). Bright Grey tend to come out quite favourably if diabetes is disclosed. Other companies are favourable for things like working at height.

The differences in quoted premiums between different life offices depend on whether there is anything non-standard that will affect the underwriter's decision about you based on their company's policies.

We've had it with L&G and Aviva, and we haven't had to claim, so can't comment on that, but Aviva have been helpful with some queries we've had recently.

We have most of our policies index linked. So for example we took out a £30,000 joint life insurance three years ago with 'indexation' which means it's linked to the retail price index (RPI) so that your policy's value doesn't deteriorate (£30k in 20yrs might be only worth 22k in buying power you see). Every year they review the RPI and our policy value increases, but so does our premium. But the increases are not huge by any means! So we started with £30,000 cover for £7.21pm, we now have £31,753 cover for £7.81. That seems fair enough to me!

It's optional though, you can choose a fixed price policy, you just risk inflation rises really hitting the value of the policy if and when it pays out. If it never pays out (and I bloody hope mine never does - I plan on me & DH being around after 65!) then the person with the index linked policy has paid more monthly to get nothing in the end than the person without it... But if you do have to claim, the person with indexation is the winner.
It depends what it's for too - we have a policy covering just the mortgage that pays out on death or a critical illness, and that one is a decreasing term, because our mortgage will go down over the next 25yrs. In 15yrs we'll need half the amount of cover than when we took it out!

Best thing to do really is to use an advised service and listen to what the IFA has to say - they'll recommend a package of policies that suit your personal situation. Then pick what feels right to you from what you've been told!