What is Life Insurance?
Life Insurance can be defined as a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurance company, where the insurer promises to pay a sum of money in exchange for a premium, upon the death of an insured person or after a set period.
Based on the arrangement, in the event of the death of the policyholder or, if the policy matures, the insurance provider shall pay the person or his family a lump sum amount, after a certain amount of time. There are different types of life insurance policies to suit the individual needs and requirements of the policy buyers.
Why Life Insurance ?
Life Insurance is a financial cover for a contingency linked with human life, like death, disability, accident, retirement etc. Human life is subject to risks of death and disability due to natural and accidental causes. When human life is lost or a person is disabled permanently or temporarily, there is loss of income to the household.
Life Insurance is needed :
- To ensure that your immediate family has some financial support in the event of your demise
- To finance your children’s education and other needs
- To have a savings plan for the future so that you have a constant source of income after retirement
- To ensure that you have extra income when your earnings are reduced due to serious illness or accident
- To provide for other financial contingencies and life style requirements
Non-Term Plans:
Whole Life Plan
The whole life plan is an insurance plan which covers your life against the risk of “dying too early” and “living too long” both, as the life cover is provided for the whole life keeping maximum maturity age as 100 in most of the plans. This insurance company pays the policy proceeds to your nominee in the event of your death during a policy term, but if you survive till the maximum maturity age, the company will provide the maturity benefit as well.
Endowment Plan
Endowment plan comes with the component of saving and insurance making it a twin benefit plan under the policy. Endowment plans offer lump sum payout in the event of death or maturity, whichever happens first. This life insurance plan can be opted to ensure a robust corpus and regular savings to meet financial objectives in the future.
Money Back Plan
This policy offers a portion of the sum assured payout on regular intervals during the policy term in terms of money backs or survival benefits, while the insured is alive. Once the insured survives through the entire policy term, the remaining sum assured is paid back as maturity benefit. In case the insured dies during the term of the policy, apart from the money backs, the lump sum payout is given to the nominee also known as survival benefits.
Child Plans
Child plans are a type of life insurance plans, which are taken with a specific objective of giving unperturbed financial support to the child in terms of education, higher education, marriage, etc. Child plans also offer death and maturity benefits (whichever happens earlier). Usually, such plans come with an inbuilt waiver of premium benefit to continue the policy to ensure coverage for your child.
ULIPS
ULIPs (Unit Linked Insurance Plans) provide the twin benefit of insurance and investment opportunities under one umbrella. ULIPs are linked to the market, and the insured’s money is invested in various funds (based on equities, debts, government bonds) as per the risk-taking capacity of the insured. The lump-sum payout is given to the nominee in the event of death, and the entire value of the fund is given to the insured if he survives the policy term.
Pension Plan
Such plans cover the risk of ‘Living too Long’. Pension plans enable to survive the same lifestyle and allow financial independence after the retirement age. Regular payment of premiums builds a financial corpus, which can be withdrawn partly and the remaining can be utilized to provide pensions to the insured as stated in the policy.