Important Tips on Buying a Life Insurance Policy

Introduction

Life Insurance comes with many benefits. Nowadays, life insurance isn't just a contract between the insurer and insured, which provides protection against risk of life by paying a premium. For sustainability in the market, every company and product need to adopt the current demand and circumstances and same goes with the life insurance products too. In these years of change in the market, regulator and life insurance companies have taken major steps to meet the changing demands which have provided customers with following options and benefits:-

Wide range of product portfolio
Options of saving and investment
Added benefits with life insurance
Different ways of getting low premium and high coverage
Additions in list of key features of life insurance polices
Transparency and hassle free procedure
With a pool of different companies, products and benefits to choose from, you need to pick out the best one for you. There are many things which you need to keep in mind before buying insurance and there is no specific guideline for choosing the best one, it all depends on your need and situation. But there are some important points related to every policy which can help you to filter the best insurance policies. Based on those important points, we have outlined following important tips for buying a life insurance policy.

Tips

Start early
Buying a Life insurance when you are young, gives you a lot of benefit. You will be able to get high coverage at a very low rate of premium because age has a direct effect the premium rate (younger the buyer, lower the premium is). In addition, with low premium, you will get better financial planning, long duration of coverage and your premium will be locked at a very low rate for your entire policy term.

Choose the right coverage amount
Don't decide your policy coverage on your feelings or on calculations based on single factors (like 10 times of your salary). While deciding upon the coverage amount, always consider your current lifestyle, debts, assets, future obligation (college education of children, settlement of your family to different locations, etc.), and rate of inflation. Choosing low coverage will give you zero benefit while choosing a high coverage will be a costly deal for you.

Comparison is the key
Comparison is very much necessary before buying an insurance policy. It helps you to choose the best policy at the best rate. There will be many polices which will not offer benefits which you are looking and may be available at different rates. There are many IRDAI certified comparison portals which provide a comparison of different policies on their websites which is unbiased and easy.

Choose the right policy
Different policies have different benefits, eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, exclusions and inclusions. You can choose the right policy for yourself only if you know about it well. So the key in choosing the right product is better understanding about it. Know about the riders available, add on benefits, what is not covered under your policy, premium rates and all other aspects related to your policy. Know your needs well and then find policies accordingly.

Choose the right company
There are more than 20 companies in India and it very much necessary to choose a trustworthy company. There are some companies which provide best insurance policies and are trustworthy also. You need to check the claim settlement ratio, review (by customer and experts), claim settlement process, product portfolio, price, etc. of different companies to choose the right one.

Understand the brochure
There is a brochure available with every Life Insurance product which is available on the company's website. It contains all the key benefits, features, eligibility, inclusions, exclusion, term and condition related to the policy. Go through every fine line of the brochure to understand your policy well. It will help you to use the available benefits and avoid any bad surprises in future.

Disclose your information correctly in the proposal form
Some people hide facts about themselves while filling the proposal form and giving personal details to the company. For example, some people tick themselves as a non-smoker while giving details to get low rate of premiums. But later, at the claims stage, it could result in zero benefit as the claim will be rejected due to misleading information provided by the insured. You can't fool the company by giving wrong information. So to avoid any hassle during the policy or at the time of making claims, it is always necessary to provide the right information about yourself to the company.