Life insurance - advice please

[SandyRayH]

Hi, about to purchase life insurance and have been reading the Money Saving Expert' guide and have gotten quotes from a discount broker. Happy with several quotes and want to ensure I pick wisely in order to ease any potential claims required in the future, for obvious reasons. I've read various reviews of the companies online but they're very mixed. The Fairer Finance reviews weren't very clear either. AIG seems very bad. Legal and General I'm erring towards, but only because I'm more familiar with them. Do you have any recommendations or general advice please?

I'll also want to write it into trust but not too sure how, unless that part becomes clearer once I've selected the policy. I want a guaranteed premium but there seems no mention of this yet. Thanks for any help!

General advice - why not use a financial adviser who can answer all your queries and ensure you get the right policy to meet your needs?

Thanks @sunseed I wanted to get some general views. I've found that on the past, using advisors for things such as mortgage means that sometimes they don't search all of market or can be swayed to certain providers based on the commission they receive. I've found a policy I'm happy with, and writing a trust seems straightforward, I just wondered at what stage it might appear in the process i.e. after I click "apply now". But more so, the post was just for a geber consensus on which providers have proved reliable when dealing with a payout, and this is something that there's seemingly not lots of info/reviews online.

It is possible to find statistics for the proportion of claims that get paid out by each company but the data isa bit meaningless without knowing the detail behind it, eg. Did they receive a larger number of ineligible claims that shouldn't have been made in the first place as they were never going to meet the criteria.

My observation is that I would always go for full medical underwriting up front to avoid quibbling as far as possible in the event of making a claim.

Putting a policy in trust can be done at any point in the process, you don't have to wait for the policy to be put into force, as long as you have an application number. Look for the trust forms on the website of whichever company you are using. You will need to make sure you use the correct form depending on what type of policy you have and how you want the proceeds to be distributed. Usually discretionary trust for simple life only policy but check carefully if you're doing something else or you may not achieve what you intend.

Thanks @sunseed that's very helpful.