Insurance: The Common Insurance Points

Posted by How To Choose Insurance | How to choose insurance | Sunday 28 February 2010 8:59 pm

Most people will be familiar with insurance in some form or another. We all have taken out home insurance, car insurance or credit insurance among others. Insurance contracts are long and complex documents with a lot of small print. Sometimes even a lawyer would get lost in the complexities involved in them. However, there are a few features that all insurance contracts must have in common.

  • All insurance contracts will cover a chance event that may or may not occur. This is the risk you are insuring against. The event may be a fire in your home, a car accident, medical costs or virtually any other event. The sole exception to this is life insurance, which covers your death. This is an event that is bound to occur, however, it is the timing of death that is uncertain here.

  • There must be some quantifiable economic loss. Insurers will take on risks, but they must be able to quantify and predict the loss involved. The insurance company must be able to know roughly what kind of loss will be involved should the event occur. The loss must be quantifiable in monetary terms. For example, you may be able to insure yourself for medical expenses or a new car, but not for the sadness you experience as a result of an accident.

  • The loss must be definite. Again, insurers must know what kind of financial risks they are taking one; otherwise they will not be able to set the price of the premium.

  • The loss must be significant. The financial cost of the insured risk must justify the administrative costs of the insurance contract. Suppose you want to insure a racehorse. Someone will come from the insurance company, assess the value of the horse, write up a contract stating what?s covered and what conditions you must meet, calculate the premium and issue the contract. This will be worth all the effort for a valuable racehorse. However if you wanted to insure your goldfish, it would be difficult to justify the effort involved in setting up the contract.

  • The loss must not be catastrophic. What is catastrophic will depend on the size of the insurer and the assets they have available. But the insurance will not be worth anything if the loss is more than the insurer could afford. For example, insuring against an earthquake will often be impossible as the losses, should the event occur, would be impossible for the insurance company to ever pay out.

    • Joseph Kenny is the webmaster of the insurance site http://www.insure121.com/ where you will find information, news and links to the leading providers of insurance in the UK. If you found this article interesting you may find more articles of the same nature in the insurance guide located on site.

    Life Insurance The Facts

    Posted by How To Choose Insurance | How to choose insurance | Friday 31 July 2009 1:59 pm

    Insurance involves transferring a risk that you bare, onto an insurance company, so that you no longer have to worry about the event occurring. While you pay a fee, or premium for this, what you get in return is peace of mind. So what is the risk that you are transferring with life insurance? Well, quite simply, it is the financial risk of your own death. It should also be remembered that it is in certain circumstances possible to insure the life of another person, such as your husband or wife, or an important employee. The insurance company will then pay out to the named beneficiary once the event occurs, and this is usually a family member or business associate of the insured.

    The thing that insurance companies will be looking for is insurable interest. It may come as a surprise but in the early days of aviation, there were some clever entrepreneurs who would hang around at airports and buy life insurance policies on the passengers. Since plane crashes were very common, a good proportion of the insured passengers died and the insurance companies were faced with the prospect of paying out vast sums to these men.

    This is not the reason insurance was developed and the system was not designed to cope with this kind of speculation. Therefore the rule developed that you could only insure the life of someone you had a real interest in surviving. There is also the public policy issue that it would be tempting to some people to insure strangers and then make sure they died soon.

    The insurance policy will have two important details defined right at the outset. The first is who is to be paid out under the policy. While this seems obvious, it is important to think carefully about it as, unlike in most insurance contracts, the purchaser of the policy is rarely the beneficiary under a life insurance policy.

    The second is the amount to be paid out on to occurrence of the event. It must be remembered that this is also subject to the rule of insurable interest and therefore you cannot have a policy on your life for more than your life is reasonably financially worth. Since the premium is partially calculated on the amount of the payout, you will simply be paying for more insurance than you can receive. Therefore be honest with how much you earn and how much support your providing to your family so that the premium will be accurately assessed.

    Joseph Kenny is the webmaster of the insurance site http://www.insure121.com/ where you will find information, news and links to the leading providers of insurance in the UK. If you found this article interesting you may find more articles of the same nature in the insurance guide located on site.

    Life Insurance Settlement

    Posted by How To Choose Insurance | How to choose insurance | Sunday 5 July 2009 5:59 pm

    A new financial tool is now available for senior citizens. Life Insurance Settlements are quickly becoming a way for seniors to receive money from an under performing or costly life insurance policy.

    A life insurance settlement is the sale of a life insurance policy (whole life, term, universal life, etc.) covering the life of one or more individuals with an ?ascertainable and limited? life expectancy. A life insurance settlement is usually most beneficial seniors over the age of 65.

    Some basic qualifications for a life insurance settlement are the above-mentioned age and health requirement, policy is assignable and beyond the contestability period, and the policy must be issued by a US insurance company. The higher the insurance company rating could provide a higher settlement amount.

    The policy owner is paid a lump sum in cash in exchange for transferring ownership of the policy and premium requirements to the purchasing funder or company. The amount paid to the seller is stated as a percentage of the policy?s face amount and is calculated based on the specific life expectancy of the underlying insured. Each life insurance settlement amount is calculated on a case-by-case basis.

    The popularity of life insurance settlements is due to the fact that if a policy owner was thinking about letting a policy lapse or surrender, they now have the opportunity to receive a payout larger than the surrender value. ?It just doesn?t make sense, that seniors nationwide are letting life insurance policies lapse after paying years of premiums?. ?By just exploring the option of a life insurance settlement they could be gaining thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars they never knew were available to them,? says Grant Shellhammer of www.LifeSettlementPro.com. Another benefit is that there are no fees or obligations to have a policy evaluated to see if a life insurance settlement is available.

    There are numerous other benefits to policy owners through a life insurance settlement. These include relief of costly premium expenses, higher cash payout than the surrender value, cash payout instead of a policy lapse, additional funds for retirement and other endeavors, funds for health related expenses, and other estate and financial planning needs.

    To sum things up, a life insurance settlement is a strong and beneficial financial tool for senior citizens nationwide. Consumers now have options to receive more money versus the previous options of only a cash surrender or policy lapse. With the consumer friendly approach of a life insurance settlement, the market will continue to grow.

    Grant Shellhammer is located in sunny Orlando, FL. He is a licensed insurance agent and affliate Life Settlement Broker with Life Settlement Pro. He works with senior citizens and financial professionals nationwide to receive the highest available offers for their life insurance policies.

    Contact details:
    grant@lifesettlementpro.com
    1.888.973.8377
    http://www.lifesettlementpro.com