Life insurance is meant to complete your financial plan, but buying life insurance can be a confusing experience. Luckily, we’ve outlined the eight steps you need to take to purchase life insurance
Life insurance is meant to complete your financial plan. While you help to pay for all the things your family needs in life, life insurance allows you to continue paying for those same things after death. The life insurance death benefit protects your beneficiaries from shouldering an immense financial burden, and can pay for college, dependent care, and other debts that you may have incurred while alive that your family could be responsible for.
But buying life insurance can be a confusing experience. Luckily, we’ve outlined the eight steps you need to take to purchase life insurance.
Policygenius is the easy way to compare life insurance.
"Policygenius… guides consumers to figure out what kind of insurance they need and offers them options."
– The Wall Street Journal
Wading through the morass of life insurance know-how means picking up a bunch of new vocabulary words. Knowing what those words mean is half the battle, because you’ll be better equipped to choose the best life insurance policy for your needs. Here are some of the most important terms:
In addition to learning the vocabulary, have a look at Policygenius’ guide to the different types of life insurance to help you choose the policy you need.
Before you shop around for a life insurance policy, take stock of the expenses you have and expect to have in the future. Remember, the purpose of life insurance is to make sure your family isn’t left paying for those expenses on their own.
Add up all these costs to get a sense of what you’ll need to replace after you’re dead. Your death benefit should encompass that entire dollar amount minus any liquid assets you already have that your family can use to make up some of the financial shortfall. A typical breakdown looks like this:
Obligation | Cost | |
---|---|---|
RESOURCES | ||
After-tax income | $32,500 | |
Assets | $20,000 | |
EXPENSES | ||
Five years of support at $32,500/year | $162,500 | |
Raising two kids, ages 3 and 5* | $1,176,147 | |
End-of-life expenses | $10,000 | |
Total expenses | $1,348,647 | |
DEBT | ||
Credit card debt | $5,000 | |
Auto loan | $3,000 | |
Mortgage | $500,000 | |
Total debt | $518,000 | |
Total financial obligations (Expenses + Debt) | $1,856,647 | |
Total financial obligations minus assets (Coverage gap) | $1,836,647 | |
RECOMMENDED COVERAGE | $1,840,000 |
*Assuming each goes to a private, out-of-state, four-year university, plus childcare expenses
For more tips and information, see our full guide on how much life insurance you need.
Getting a quote is easy. You can do it right here using Policygenius’ coverage calculator with just a few pieces of personal information, like your location, age, gender, and basic medical history.
Getting a quote shouldn’t take you much more than 10 minutes. Using an independent insurance agent or broker, like Policygenius, you can get quotes from a number of different insurers right under one roof with just a few pieces of personal information, like your location, age, gender, and basic medical history.
These quotes will feature your premiums and the amount of coverage you’ll receive, and you can compare and choose the one you need. You can also adjust some of the numbers in our calculator until you hit upon a premium-to-coverage ratio that fits more in line with your budget.
Most people pick the cheapest policy that has the coverage they need, but it’s important to compare other features, like what features and riders a company offers, their customer service and other ratings, and whether or not they’re best for your particular health profile. Compare beyond price to find the best life insurance company for you.
With Policygenius, you can compare your various life insurance options side by side for free. If you’re unsure of which insurance carrier you should go with, be sure to check out our insurer reviews, which can help you satisfy concerns you may have, such as whether an insurer has good customer service or lets you make modifications to your coverage online.
You can make the application process as seamless as possible by having all the documents you need on hand before you apply. These include:
Getting a quote is an application in that you had to hand over basic information. But the actual application is a little more in-depth. That could mean providing your Social Security number, which the insurers need to check whether you’ve applied to other policies with other insurers and to confirm what you reported in your medical history against prescription drug databases like the Medical Information Bureau (MIB). The application may also ask for a driver’s license number to see if you’ve been involved in any accidents.
You’ll be asked to authorize your doctor to share your health information with the life insurance company, known as an attending physician statement (APS). This information is necessary to not only get you the correct policy but could also come into play later when the insurer is paying out your death benefit. If you had any medical conditions that should’ve affected your premiums, the insurer may recalculate the amount they owe to your beneficiaries to account for the missing information.
Some life insurance carriers will still want to hear from you by scheduling a phone interview. The purpose of the phone interview is to confirm the contents of your application (the “application quality check”) and may include additional questions about your hobbies and lifestyle. If you’re the kind of person who attempts to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle, you can probably expect to pay a little more for your life insurance coverage.
Be prepared for questions about your financial health, including your income and net worth, as well as about other life insurance policies you have.
At this point, your premium is still an estimation. Everything that comes next will gauge the accuracy of the information you provided to make sure you pay the right amount in premiums after your policy goes into effect.
The life insurance medical exam is meant to get an in-person look at your health. It’ll be just like going to the doctor’s office for checkup, except that you can have the medical examiner come to your home or office. The technician or nurse will take basic measurements like your height and weight, blood pressure, and pulse, as well as draw a blood sample. Sometimes you’ll also be asked to provide a urine sample.
The insurance medical exam is free for you and should take about 30 minutes. You’ll have to schedule the appointment time with your life insurance company, usually during your phone interview, and someone from the medical testing company will get in touch if they need to reschedule or cancel.
Although the procedure might seem a little burdensome, you can use the same results on other life insurance applications up to about six months later if you don’t ultimately go with your first choice of carrier. You can also ask the testing company or the life insurance company for a copy of the results, effectively scoring yourself a free medical exam.
If you’re young and healthy, you may qualify for simplified term life insurance, which doesn’t require a medical exam. If you’re fine with the small coverage amount (usually a maximum of $250,000), then this form of no-medical-exam life insurance could save you a lot of money on premiums.
The hard part is over. Now all you have to do is wait. But what’s happening behind the scenes is that someone called an underwriter, who works for the insurance carrier, calculates how risky you’re going to be to insure. The underwriter’s job is basically to confirm whether you actually get the rate you were originally quoted, and this process can take up to six to eight weeks.
During underwriting, the underwriter will look at the results of your medical exam and the data you submitted with your application. He or she will cross-reference what the insurer knows about your medical history with what’s in the MIB, looking as far back as seven years ago to see what medications you’ve been prescribed. The underwriter will also learn whether you’ve ever been convicted of a DUI/DWI or reckless driving as well as other traffic offenses.
To determine how much your premiums will cost, insurers use a health rating that will be affected by the results of your medical exam. Some medical conditions that could cause a downgrade in your health ratings, and thus an increase in the premiums you’ll have to pay, include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and tobacco use.
The most common life insurance classifications, in order from highest health rating to lowest, are Preferred Plus, Preferred, Standard Plus, and Standard. People whose health ratings are even worse than the Standard classification are assessed with a table-rating system.
Once the underwriter completes his or her work, you officially own a life insurance policy. All that’s left is for you to receive the policy and sign it. This is your chance to confirm all of the details of the policy you discussed with the insurance agent or company during the application process, the most important of which are your premiums and coverage. While the death benefit will usually stay the same, your premiums could have gone up or down depending on the assessment of the underwriter.
In addition to signing the policy, you also authorize a method of payment in the appropriate section. During the application process, you decide to pay either a monthly or an annual premium (with the latter usually offering a small discount), and this should also be indicated on the policy. You can always change the frequency of payment after the policy is in force by contacting your insurance company.
Once you sign the policy, you’ll need to mail it back to the insurer. Yes, even in the age of artificial intelligence and driverless cars, you still need to use the post. (Some insurers will let you make changes to your policy online, like updating your personal information or beneficiaries.)
Make sure to keep a copy of the policy in a safe place, and let your beneficiaries know exactly where that place is and how to access it. If your beneficiaries don’t know about the policy, they won’t know to claim the death benefit you’ve been paying for all this time, and having easy access to the policy will help them claim the payout as soon as possible.
Was this article helpful?
Security you can trust
Yes, we have to include some legalese down here. Read it larger on our legal page. Policygenius Inc. (“Policygenius”) is a licensed independent insurance broker. Policygenius does not underwrite any insurance policy described on this website. The information provided on this site has been developed by Policygenius for general informational and educational purposes. We do our best efforts to ensure that this information is up-to-date and accurate. Any insurance policy premium quotes or ranges displayed are non-binding. The final insurance policy premium for any policy is determined by the underwriting insurance company following application. Savings are estimated by comparing the highest and lowest price for a shopper in a given health class. For example: for a 30-year old non-smoker male in South Carolina with excellent health and a preferred plus health class, comparing quotes for a $500,000, 20-year term life policy, the price difference between the lowest and highest quotes is 60%. For that same shopper in New York, the price difference is 40%. Rates are subject to change and are valid as of 2/17/17.
Copyright Policygenius © 2014-2019