Business Insurance Group

Understanding a Design Professionals Insurance Policy

Most architects, engineers, environmental consultants and surveyors feel the most important coverage for them is professional liability insurance. For a more seamless type of insurance coverage the business owner’s policy should be included.

A business owner’s policy is actually two types of coverage in one. The first part of the policy is the property coverage. Typically the property portion of the policy protects business personal property such as tables, chairs, fax machines, computers, software, plotters, and printers. This is written on a replacement cost basis.

The second part of the bop is called general liability or GL. Man

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Adults Put Life Insurance in the Backseat

The number of U.S. adults with life insurance protection dropped to an all-time low in 2011, says a study conducted by the Life Insurance Market and Research Association (LIMRA). The worldwide insurance and financial association revealed that 41 percent of American adults had no life insurance coverage at all last year.

The LIMRA study revealed that nearly half of all U.S. adults are going without life insurance policies. This amounts to approximately 95 million people.

The study found that the likelihood of going without life insurance coverage has dramatically increase for every age group since 2004.

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Lifetime Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance typically comes in 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 year terms.  The term is the length of time the policy will be in effect.  At the end of the term, you can either renew the policy on an annual basis, which is usually cost-prohibitive, or you can purchase a new policy, provided youre still young enough and healthy enough.

What if you have a need for life insurance after the end of the term period?  This is a dilemma a lot of buyers of term life insurance face.  If you are 30 years older at the end of the term of your term policy, the premiums for a new policy are going to be much more expensive, even if you are in the same health class you were in when you purchased your first policy (which is rare).  Keeping the existing policy in force on an annual basis (with premium increases annually) is usually not the best way to go, as the renewal premiums are, in most cases, going to be much higher than you paid during the policy term.

You can always purchase a permanent policy, either whole life or universal life insurance, which will last your lifetime.  However, if you purchased a term policy and, sometime during the term period, you decide you need something more permanent, you can, in most cases, convert your term policy to a universal life policy.

If you are considering purchasing a life insurance policy now and you feel that you have a need for lifetime protection, you should look into permanent policies, either whole life or universal life. They

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Reducing Life Insurance Premiums

Have you ever wondered how life insurance companies decide how much to charge you? They do it based on a combination factors that help them determine your likelihood of dying in the near future. Quite obviously, the longer you live, the more premiums you will pay them. Permanent policies like whole life are intended to be collected on eventually, but they would prefer to collect more than the benefit is worth of money from you first. Therefore, the higher risk you are for serious illness and death, the more they will charge you.

Some of these factors, such as age and family medical history, are not controllable by you, although by choosing to buy permanent insurance when you are younger rather than older will get you a lower price. Full Post…

Life Insurance or Death Insurance?

Having been in the life insurance business for as long as I have, I have often wondered why it is called life insurance rather than death insurance.  After all, you can purchase Accidental Death insurance, you can buy Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance, but when you purchase a policy to pay your beneficiaries in the event of your death, you buy Life Insurance.

In many of the promotional materials I read about life insurance, its rare to read about the Death Benefit.  You dont often see the words Death, Dying, or other words signifying the end of life.  After all, who (other than casket manufacturers and undertakers) want to talk about death?

In the early days of life insurance, there was a method of selling the product which was often called, backing the hearse up to the door.  With this method, the agent would paint a picture to the wife of the prospect of funerals, of life without a partner, of children running around without shoes, etc.  While I dont, for a minute, want to degrade the wonderful uses of life insurance, I have never been a fan of that type of sale.

Life insurance really is death insurance, as it pays a benefit at the death of the insured, but it would be tough to start conversations by saying, lets talk about your death.  Its not a subject I like to talk about too much, so I understand the insurance industrys use of the label Life Insurance.

There are living benefits to be had with permanent life insurance policies, such as Whole Life Insurance.  With a cash-value build-up, there are living benefits, such as having enough funds for retirement, college funds for the children, or cash to use as you wish like take that trip to Europe that you never got around to doing.  Even though there is a death benefit, I can see calling this life insurance.

Term life insurance, on the other hand, without any cash-value component like its whole life cousin, is really pure death insurance.  There are no living benefits, unless you consider that there are living benefits in knowing that your family will be able to continue living in the lifestyle you set up for them.

Come to think of it, the naming of this insurance product isnt much different than other types of policies most people purchase auto insurance and homeowners insurance.  After all, we dont call them car crash insurance and your home is damaged by a fire insurance.  We do, however, purchase flood insurance and earthquake insurance (at least in California).

 Call it life insurance or death insurance, whether you purchase term or whole life insurance, if you are married and have a family. you should

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Affordable Health Insurance to Cover Medical Bills

Health insurance is very essential for every person. Nobody has watched the future, anytime a person can get any kind of problem at anytime. If you think that you are always safe then it might be difficult for you, because you can not always predict for the best.

However you should always think positive. This is necessary for you, but accidents and medical problems can be occurred at anytime. It might that you have not done any mistake even then you are suffering from problem. If you met with any accident and the hospital charges are high then who is going to pay your bills. At this time major medical coverage helps to solve entire of your problem.

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Why I Sell Life Insurance

Life insurance agents and brokers hope their clients will never need the term insurance policies they purchased.  I dont know of many sales jobs in which the sales person prefers their clients dont use the product they sold them.

Yesterday, once again I was reminded why I choose to sell life insurance.  We received a call from one of our clients beneficiaries that our client passed away.  She was inquiring about how to file a claim.  It is never an easy conversation for me, but knowing that the life insurance policy my client purchased from me is going to provide for his family for many years, helps me get through the call.

In this profession, its not difficult to get into the daily minutiae involved in selling life insurance policies from completing a mind-numbing amount of paperwork to working with sometimes-stubborn underwriters, etc.  On some days, one can get so wrapped up in these details that one can lose sight of why we do it.

Speaking to my clients recently-deceased wife and helping her navigate through the claims process, I remembered (again) why I sell life insurance.  Sure, I earn a good living and I get to speak with a lot of interesting people from all over the country.  However, it is knowing that I am helping my clients to financially protect their families futures that makes this a great a great occupation. 

Some Important Life Insurance Defintitions

In learning about life insurance, it is important to know some key definitions.  By having some key terms well-defined, you wont get tripped up while reading your application or policy.  Most people never read their policies because they get tripped up on some of the terminology.  You can visit our Life Insurance Glossary where you will find definitions on many of the words you will come across in your life insurance application and policy.  Here are a few key words found in our glossary:

• Policy The written statement of the agreement between insurer and insured (or policy owner, if other than the insured), including all endorsements and attached papers, which constitutes the entire contract of insurance.  See contract and insurance policy.

• Death Benefit In life insurance, the face amount, as stated in the policy, to be paid upon proof of death of the insured.

• Beneficiary The person (or entity) to whom the proceeds of a life insurance policy are payable when the insured dies.  There are various types of beneficiaries (see primary, contingent or secondary and tertiary beneficiaries).

• Term Life Insurance Life insurance issued for a term of years, normally building up no cash value and expiring without value.  Typical term periods are 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years.

• Permanent Life Insurance A term loosely applied to cash value life insurance.  This type of policy is meant to last a whole life, as opposed to term, which is in force for a specified period of time or term.

• Whole Life Insurance A plan of insurance offering protection for the whole of life, proceeds being payable at death.  Premiums may be paid under a continuous premium arrangement or on a limited payment basis for virtually any desired period of years.

• Cash Value - In a life insurance policy, the amount available to the owner when a policy is surrendered to the company.  During the early policy years, the cash value is the reserve less a surrender charge.  in the later policy years, the cash surrender value usually equals or closely approximates the reserve value.

• Underwriting - The process of selecting risks and classifying them according to their degrees of insurability so that the appropriate rates may be assigned.  The process includes rejection of risks.

I pulled these few out of the Glossary, as I thought these would be a good place to start.  Visit the glossary when you get a chance and look up the definitions for any of the words that might have tripped you up previously.