Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A Brief Explanation Of Life Insurance


By Rodney Daniel Bolton

Life insurance is a term that refers to a contractual agreement between a policy holder and an insurance company wherein the insurance provider agrees to pay out an agreed sum to the designated beneficiaries of the policy (usually the insureds family) upon the insureds death for a predetermined regular fee.

In some countries, insurance companies have been known to include catering costs for the funeral in their policy agreement, but in the UK the main form of life insurance agreement is to simply have a lump sum paid to the specified party upon the demise of the insured person.

Life insurance policies are legal contracts and the terms mentioned in those contracts describe the events that the insured person will be covered for. There are often circumstances of death that are not covered in a life insurance contract such as war, suicide, riot or civil commotion.

Life contracts usually come in one of two forms, either a protection policy or an investment policy. Protection policies will be fairly standard life insurance policies in that they will require a benefit to be paid to the contracts beneficiaries (usually a lump sum) in the occurrence of an event described in the contract. Investment policies however are used for the growth of capital by regular premiums (payments). Common types are variable life policies, whole life policies and universal life policies.

The beneficiary refers to the person who will receive the policy proceeds (usually a lump sum) upon the death of the insured. The beneficiary can be changed at any time by the policy owner unless an irrevocable beneficiary is designated, in which case permission must be gained from the beneficiary regarding any beneficiary changes.

There is a difference between the policy owner and the insured, although they are usually the same person. Say a man takes out an insurance policy on his own life; he is then the policy holder and the insured. However if his wife takes out a policy for his life, then she is the policy holder and he is still the insured.

In cases where policy owner differs from the insured, insurance companies are looking to limit who can take out a policy for who's life. This is called an insurable interest requirement and it means that the person taking out the policy would suffer a genuine loss if the insured should die. This is to stop people taking out policies on people who they expect to die and aren't particularly concerned if they do or not, and so as not to increase the chances of murder being committed by someone who has taken out a policy for someone, and then intends to kill them to reap the rewards.

Life insurance is essentially, as with most insurance contracts, a contract between the insured and the provider whereby a payment is made on a regular basis to the insurance provider by the policy holder, and upon the occurrence of one of the terms described in the contract, a lump sum (or another predetermined form of proceed) is paid out to beneficiaries defined in the contract.

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