Life insurance for seniors
[social_share]Most life insurance is aimed at people at the height of their career and with large families. While it’s true that these people have a great need for life insurance, there’s also life insurance suited for seniors.
Seniors are often refused life insurance, or they find that life insurance becomes very expensive. This is because life insurance is essentially calculated in terms of life expectancy, e.g., the more likely it is that a person will die during the life insurance’s term, then the higher the proportion of the payout that’s charged as a premium.
The two strongest indicators of life insurance are the age of the life insurance applicant (particularly the age at the end of the term) and whether that person has had a serious health issue in the recent past. Both of these situations are an issue for seniors as they are obviously older, but they are also far more likely to have had health issues than people of a working age, and not to have recovered as well.
Many people also tend to think that they don’t have dependents as they grow older. Although it’s the case that the dependents may not be as obvious or as totally dependent as they were when they were younger, there may still be a need for some form of insurance. Examples include a partner who is not fully covered by a pension, or elderly relatives – often brothers or sisters – who are being assisted in some way and who would need to pay for this assistance if their healthier sibling were to die before them or become disabled.
There are some forms of term life insurance that do insure seniors, although the premiums tend to be higher, the payouts lower and the terms shorter. There are also more rigorous and intrusive medical questions. It’s usually a good idea to go to a life insurance broker to look for the best deal, as although they will charge a fee they often find a substantial saving over the policies offered by the large life insurance providers.
Another form of life insurance is funeral insurance. As the payout for this is lower, there tends to be fewer medical questions and higher ages accepted. Most types of funeral insurance tend not to pay out if the person covered dies within twelve months.
