Do I need a Financial Advisor to set up Life Insurance?

[senorita81]

I am looking into getting Life Insurance and Critical Illness for myself and husband. I have been on comparison sites researching best quotes etc and I think I am going to go with Royal London.
However it seems that most people seem to use a Financial Advisor to do this? I was just going to do it myself, has anyone else organised it themselves? Or am I being daft organising it myself? So confused!

Why would you need a financial advisor to organise this - just do it yourself?

We do a myriad of financial investments and transactions by ourselves - I don't trust FA after using one many years ago and being advised to pay into a personal pension rather than my employer's final salary scheme!

Just find a link to Royal London, and work out how much cover you want and for how long. Our LI (with Aviva - taken out directly) expires in about 3 yrs when our youngest is 21, but we also have plenty of savings and investments, so don't really need it now anyway.

Thanks for your reply. It's good to know that you set up your LI yourself. I would rather do it myself too but when I spoke to Royal London yesterday, they gave me the impression that they mostly speak to Financial Advisors on behalf of clients.

Just ensure you put it in Trust. That’s the bit IFA ‘s do and the general public don’t. It’s the bit that matters!

Also if you have and health issues use an IFA as failed applications are a nightmare.

The advantage to you of using a life insurance broker (or FA) is that they do all the running around and chasing on your behalf which saves you time and hassle, both in terms of sourcing the best quotes for the cover you need and then getting it through underwriting and on risk.

It's pretty much the same as the fact that you could arrange your own mortgage direct with a lender, but depending on your personal circumstances it might be better value for money (when you factor in time and aggravation too) for you to outsource that task to a mortgage broker.

In general you can do it yourself (we did) but I’ve got a feeling royal London tend to go through IFAs for their products as a relative has investments with them that could only be taken via an IFA and not direct. It may be that if the product is the best for you by a long way it is worth it but there will be other companies you can definitely go direct.