How will your dependants cope financially without you? Life Insurance can help by providing a short term and longer income to help meet the essential bills.
Taking out a mortgage is probably the largest financial commitment many people will ever make. But what happens if a borrower dies, or becomes critically ill?
Most people know of someone that has suffered from cancer or had another critical illness. But what about the financial impact of this change of lifestyle?
Income Protection
Statistically customers are many times more likely to have a period of illness that lasts more than 6 months during their working lifetime, than they are to die.
Unemployment Cover Unemployment is a possibility in most walks of life and whilst many will be able to find new employment easily Unemployment Insurance can provide peace of mind.
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We would recommend you use our advice process. This will ensure that you review all the options before deciding what fits your budget and needs.
According to the Economic Times, nearly three out of every five married women are full-time mothers and homemakers, but because they are in the house it is often assumed they are not open to risk.
However, financial specialists have emphasised that insurance cover for a housewife can be valued by adding together the costs that would come about as a result of her absence.
"Life insurance is all about replacement of financial loss on the death or disability of an individual, so that the life can go on as earlier in financial terms," Debashis Sarkar, director of marketing at Max New York Life Insurance, told the newspaper.
"Housewives may not be working but they do take up multiple responsibilities that can be translated into financial value," she added.
Housewives are advised to look into policies with cash value and not pure risk cover policies, while they might also look for additional riders such as women-specific critical illness where conditions such as breast cancer, cervical cancer and ovarian cancer will be covered.
The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) tries to establish what lessons can be learnt from fatalities or poor results in medical care.
Their study focused on cases at 39 NHS hospitals and 19 private hospitals and concluded that there were problems with care levels in three quarters of the cases where patients died.
Investigators uncovered issues with delays once patients had been referred, problems with the way tests were carried out and issues with communication between doctors, in addition to problematic patient after-care.
Professor Tom Treasure, chairman of NCEPOD, said "If the means at our disposal are not deployed effectively and in a timely way, appropriate to the circumstances, lives that might have been saved will be lost."
Coronary heart bypass operations have an average two per cent death, and although low, surgeon Ian Martin has said that improving the quality of patients care could have saved more lives.
AXA scraps GP report limits People under the age of 45 applying for life insurance or critical illness cover with AXA will no longer have automatic general practitioner report (GPR) limits.
According to the provider, the change is a response to feedback from financial advisers regarding the lengthy delays caused by obtaining the reports.
In addition, automatic GPR limits for under-45s' income protection applications will increase to £50,000.
The insurer has outlined its aim to make greater use of nurse screenings or blood tests, which are on average two weeks quicker than a GPR.
"Our market-leading tele-underwriting process means the need for GPRs is significantly reduced and in the light of lengthy delays and spiralling costs of GPRs we've decided to break away from their automatic use for younger ages," explained Mike Taylor, chief underwriter at AXA.
"For younger lives, especially those who do not have any medical problems, a screening provides an underwriter with a better view of their health including build, habits and blood pressure," he continued.
All life insurance products offered by fellow provider Legal and General were recently made exempt from the ongoing duty of disclosure the company described as "often seen as a burden."
At Direct Life we aim to ensure that all of our clients get the best deal possible when purchasing their life insurance, term life assurance, mortgage protection and critical illness life insurance policies online.