Just Opting For Fully Underwritten Policy Will Not Get You Low Cost Life Insurance Coverage

If you are looking for low cost life insurance that provides adequate coverage, look only for fully underwritten traditional term life policy. These policies are cheap, but they have been designed to provide comparatively larger benefit. Let us first glance through their salient features:

Term life is a simple and straightforward insurance policy, which people buy only to cover certain events such as death, critical illness, terminal illness, accidents, dismemberment etc.

There is no cash value accretion in the policy and hence no diversion of funds; the rates cover only the cost of insurance.

You buy the policy for a specific term and if the insured event does take place within that term, the designated beneficiary gets a stipulated amount as benefit.

However, if the term expires without any such events taking place, he cannot claim any return because in the absence of cash value accumulation, there is no scope for asset building.

As I said, a fully underwritten term life insurance policy is always very affordably priced. However, there are also some partially underwritten term life policies; these are known as life insurance no exam. They are comparatively more expensive, especially for healthy and tobacco free people; but if you want immediate coverage or hassle free purchase process, you do not have any other alternative but these.

To understand the difference between a low cost life insurance and life insurance no exam, you will have to know a little about their underwriting process. Although that is a long and grueling task, in essence such a method helps the insurer to select and classify the exposures. You can understand how important such a process is. Indeed, wrong selection of exposures may lead to financial disaster for the company.

This may be the reason why an affordable and fully underwritten policy always requires their applicants to undergo a medical test. Not only that. The carriers also gather as much information about the applicant as they can. They use all these data to determine the risk of insurance for the carriers. The cost of insurance actually depends on that.

However, in case of life insurance no exam policy; the actuaries have only partial information at hand. Consequently, they can undertake only partial evaluation and this understandably poses greater risk for the carriers. Although by running the applicant through Medical Information Banks or Motor Vehicle and other agency reports, the carriers can have certain idea about their insurability. Without the actual physical test, they can never be sure. To cover the risk of partial underwriting, the life insurance rates for such policies are always kept higher. That is why people looking for low cost life insurance coverage should always opt for with-medical exam policies.

However, there are other factors as well. Just opting for a fully underwritten term life policy will not get you the coverage at low life insurance rates. Your underwriting profile should also match underwriting guidelines followed by the carriers. Now the question is how you will know that. The carriers do not actually advertise the criteria they look for while offering low cost life insurance coverage. Moreover, each carrier follows a different set of underwriting guidelines. This adds to the confusion even more.

However, if you study the life insurance quote offered by each carrier, you may have a glimpse into the underwriting principles the carriers follow. In general, age, gender, tobacco use and health condition are some of the basic variables, which determine if you are going to get the coverage at affordable rate, or not. At the same time, know that rather than a single variable, it is the permutation and combination of all variables, which determine the life insurance rates.

Let us take an example. It is true that younger people get the coverage at lower rate; but if that person smokes so many cigarettes a day, he will have to pay at a much higher rate. People with higher body mass index also have to pay at a much higher rate. It is true that healthy people get the coverage at affordable rates, but if any one of his parents had died due to certain diseases before certain age, he will have to pay at a higher rate. Yet, to get the coverage at affordable rate, what we can do is to:

Take good care of our health from the beginning

Lead a disciplined and active lifestyle

Give up tobacco use for a year at least

Buy the policy early in life

Compare multiple quotes to know which carrier is offering the coverage at the most competitive rates

Article by David Livingston of EQuote, who is a specialist in everything life insurance. For more information on insurance life term and term life insurance no medical, visit his site today.