Tuesday 12 February 2019

Life insurance: Types, benefits and features

One of the primary goals of investing and building a corpus is to ensure the financial safety of the family. The logic behind this is that having a significant corpus built up means the family will not have to struggle to meet expenses after the death of a loved one. To achieve this goal, one of the tools used is life insurance.

Features of life insurance:

Life insurance insures a person against death. A certain decided sum is paid out to his dependents at the end of the policy period or if the policyholder dies.

Life insurance plans require an absolute premium to be paid to the insurance companies. You can pay the premium at regular intervals, i.e. monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly. This premium is paid every year till the end of the policy term.

A life insurance policy does not need to be renewed every year. However, these policies can be surrendered during the policy term if the policyholder wishes to change insurers.

It is effortless to buy life insurance online through an aggregator or the company’s website directly. This may turn out to be cheaper than buying offline.


Types of life insurance:

There are different types of life insurance policies that people take to serve different needs:

1. Term insurance plans:
A term insurance plan is a plan where there is no benefit on maturity. This means the sum assured is paid out only in case of death of the assured. It is a pure insurance policy. There is no investment component of the premium. This reduces the incentive on such policies.

2. Endowment or money back insurance plans:
In these life insurance plans, there is a certain sum of money that the policyholder gets on maturity as well. These plans involve a small amount of investment, which gets returned to the policyholder at the end of the policy term.

3. Unit-linked insurance plans (ULIP):
A ULIP is a plan where a portion of the premium is invested in a fund that is linked to the stock market. On maturity, the fund value is paid out to the policyholder. On death, the higher of the sum assured or the fund value is paid out to the family.

4. Child education plans:
These are special ULIP plans that pay out the sum assured in case of death of the policyholder and continue making investments in the decided fund till maturity. The fund value is paid out on maturity thus helping meet the education costs for the child.

5. Life insurance plans insuring health:
Several insurers have specific plans that cover critical illnesses, cancer etc. A certain sum is paid on the diagnosis or for treatment.

6. Pension plans:
Pension plans collect a premium to build a corpus and pay the policyholder or his family a monthly pension after retirement.

Benefits of life insurance:

• It provides a safety net for the family after the death of the policyholder
• Can help with specific life goals such as retirement or child's education
• Life insurance policies get a tax benefit under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act
• Life insurance plans are used as collateral for taking loans
• Term insurance policies come with riders or add-ons which provide additional safety

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