How to Choose Your Life Insurance Provider
Choosing the right life insurance company from the hundreds of providers in your state alone could be downright intimidating. Not to mention exhausting. Everyone seems to be offering the best rates and the best coverage. However, not all insurers or policies are created equal. Your choice all boils down to your needs.
With this in mind, the first step to finding the right life insurance provider should be an honest assessment of yours or your family’s needs.
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Step 1: Needs Evaluation
What type of coverage do you need? How much life insurance premium can you afford to pay on a regular basis? These are some of the most important questions that you need to answer first before you go out looking for a provider.
In the United States, there are roughly a thousand providers who sell life insurance with an estimated 300 company groups. In choosing one company, you must ensure that they are licensed in your state so in case there’s an issue with the company, your state insurance department can back you up.
In some cases wherein an insurance company goes insolvent, the state’s life insurance guaranty can channel help to policyholders.
After you’ve made your assessment, you are now ready to compare your options. Here’s a rough criteria of points that you need to keep in mind when weighing one provider with another.
Coverage
Using your list as a rubric, check out companies with offers that match these needs.
Financial Solidity
Given that financial security is what these companies sell, you should see to it that the company you will be choosing is established and financially solid. You can check out data from independent rating agencies as your basis.
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Market Ethics
Some insurance companies are bent on their principle to provide fair and responsible insurance services. This has resulted to the establishment of organizations whose members collectively adhere to a similar aim, which throughout the years has become a basis for member integrity and quality.
Check if the company you’re looking into is part of any such groups such as the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association, “an industry trade organization focused on ethical market conduct and leading practices in the marketing, sale and service of individual life insurance, long-term care insurance and annuity products.”
Advice & Service
Life insurance can be a difficult product to understand right off the bat. In this regard, it helps a lot for many shoppers to speak with a professional who can break down the jargon and help them comprehend the product in its entirety, pros and cons included.
Reputation
Reviews would be extremely helpful in helping you gauge the dependability of a company. There are numerous sites online that offer these or you can check out the national claims database to see if there had been past issues with the company from their customers and whether these issues have been duly resolved. Some customer reviews leave feedback about how the insurer handled a problem which is a great measure of company capacity.
Cost
Pricing can widely differ from one insurer to another. The best way to do a comparison is to contrast the offers based on a) your age, b) the type of policy, c) its features, and d) the amount of insurance you are buying.
Remember that the premium is different from the cost of coverage. Expert advice: to determine a policy’s cost, use the Surrender Cost Index if you’re only going to keep the policy for a specific duration. The Net Payment Cost Index is what you should base on if you want it to be your permanent coverage. Lower index costs are preferable.
Identity & Information
See to it that you know the full name, location, and contact number of the companies you’re considering. Affiliations may indicate service quality as well.
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