Life Insurance Quotes and Advice
You can use any of the links on this page to get Life Insurance quotes online. Alternatively, why not get Life Insurance Advice from our experts. We’re here to help you compare quotes and find the best Family Life Insurance policy for you and your loved ones.
We’ll talk you through the various choices available for protecting your family, discussing whether you need Term Life Insurance for a cash lump sum payout or Family Income Benefit to provide a regular income.
With so much to consider, many people find it’s worth popping one of our experts a call on 01273646484.
Tom Conner
Director at Drewberry
This Guide
- Protecting Your Family
- Why Family Insurance Matters
- Family Income Benefit
- Mortgage Insurance
- Whole of Life Cover
- Top Family Life Insurance Tips
- Setting up Family Insurance
- How Much Does Family Insurance Cost?
- Protect Your Family from Inheritance Tax
- Expert Family Insurance Advice
Written by:
Michael Englefield
Content Manager at Drewberry
Life Insurance for Your Family
The main reason people purchase Family Life Insurance is to ensure that their loved ones will be financially secure after they’re gone.
However, it isn’t just one product – there are a number of different policies you can use to provide your family with security after your death.
Family Income Benefit
Although Family Income Benefit is one of the lesser-known Life Insurance products, it’s nonetheless a powerful planning tool to ensure your family can maintain fiscal stability long after your death.
While other Life Insurance products pay out a lump sum, Family Income Benefit will pay out a regular income for a set period.
Mortgage Insurance
Mortgage Life Insurance is a form of Term Life Insurance that covers you for the outstanding mortgage debt for the set term of the loan. If you die during the policy’s term, the insurance pays out so your loved ones don’t have to worry about how they’ll afford to stay in the family home.
Whole of Life Insurance
Whole of Life Insurance is designed to cover you until your death, whenever that may be. It’s therefore designed to insure your family for obligations that won’t be cleared over time, such as funeral expenses or inheritance tax bills.
Neil
Pensions Advice
Robert
Income Protection
Do I Need Family Life Insurance?
It’s not something that anyone wants to think about, but while the risk of death is fortunately relatively low for a healthy person in the UK today, it’s still a factor you need to consider when looking to protect your family.
Short-term the risk of death might be relatively low, but the point of most Life Insurance policies is to protect you for the long run, say over the length of an entire mortgage.
When you examine the likelihood of you passing away over a much longer period, the risk rises. Given the relatively inexpensive cost of life insurance versus the cost of leaving your family unprotected it is often a no brainer to have suitable life insurance in place to provide a financial lifeline should the worst happen.
Youth is no protection…
Younger people might feel that they have no need for Life Insurance and in the short-term this may be true. The risk of death for a healthy, 30-year-old man over the next 10 years is 1 in 85. However, when you extend this period to 25 years, which is a typical length for a mortgage, the risk rises to 1 in 18.
Moreover, over a third of Aviva’s Life Insurance claims paid in 2016 were to under-60s.
Common causes of death in England and Wales in 2017 include cancer, strokes and heart attacks.
Around 1 in 6 of all deaths in England and Wales were among people aged under 64.
Josh at Drewberry was extremely helpful and friendly in answering my many questions about the policy before I went ahead.
What is Family Income Benefit?
The Life Insurance most people are familiar with pays out one tax-free cash lump sum on the death of the policyholder. However, there’s another type of Life Insurance for families that may be more useful – Family Income Benefit.
Family income benefit pays out an annual income to your loved ones for the remainder of the policy term should you die.
It is designed to provide a continuation of the policyholder’s income into the household over a much longer period. This will ensure your family’s financial future for years to come. You can also include Critical Illness Cover on the policy, so the insurance will kick in if you’re diagnosed with a serious illness such as heart attack, cancer or stroke.
How Does Family Income Benefit Work?
With Family Income Benefit, you choose the regular tax free income you’d like to be paid to your family after your death. Most individuals consider a policy term that aligns with a key milestone such as when they expect their youngest child to be self-sufficient, this will often align with the age they will leave full time education.
Family Income Benefit with Critical Illness Cover
You have the option to add Critical Illness Cover to your Family Income Benefit policy, although this will increase the premium notably as the risk of you developing a critical illness is far higher than you dying.
A serious illness can be just as destructive financially as death, it is important when considering the additional cost of Critical Illness Insurance you compare it to a suitable Income Protection plan.
Adding Critical Illness Insurance to Family Income Benefit may not always be the best option to protect your income if you’re ill. Income Protection tends to be far better suited for this purpose as it covers you if you’re off work for any medical reason.
Of course there may be instances where adding Critical Illness Cover to FIB makes sense, but it’s a complicated area. Talking it through with an expert such as one of the team at Drewberry can help.
Samantha Haffenden-Angear
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Why Family Income Benefit?
Receiving a one off lump sum to manage ongoing financial commitments can be quite a daunting task. If costs spiral it could feasibly be eaten up quickly leaving your loved ones with financial worries and a shortfall to make up, everything the life insurance was supposed to prevent.
Providing income continuity…
Family Income Benefit will provide a continuation of income for many years after your death. The end date usually aligns with the age your youngest child can reasonably be expected to be financially independent.
Family income insurance is commonly used where you have a more precise idea of your family’s financial outlay going forward, such as where you need to cover school fees. It’s also popular if you have older children as beneficiaries, who may use any financial freedom they have to spend a lump sum unwisely.
Don’t forget, if you’re in a household where there’s one breadwinner and a stay-at-home parent you may have to consider insuring both partners, not just the income earner.
Stay-at-home parents sacrifice their own income to work in the home providing childcare and housekeeping services which would otherwise have to be done by someone else. With a live-in nanny costing over £20,000 per year is this something you can afford not to protect?
Will Martin
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Do I Need Mortgage Life Insurance?
When asking yourself if you need Mortgage Insurance, consider one question: Would your family be able to stay in their home if you died before repaying the loan?
These days, most mortgages are joint and rely on two incomes. How would your family cope if they suddenly lost one of those incomes, especially if it was the main income?
If you’re concerned that your loved ones may have to sell up and move out in the event of your death and want to insure the family home by covering the mortgage, Mortgage Life Insurance may be the option for you.
How Does Mortgage Life Insurance Work?
Mortgage Insurance is a type of Term Life Insurance, which is split into:
- Decreasing Term Insurance
- Level Term Insurance
What is Decreasing Life Cover?
Decreasing cover can run alongside a mortgage. The term is set for the same length of time as the mortgage and the amount you’re covered for falls over this period alongside your outstanding loan, reaching zero by the end of the policy.
It’s important to make sure your Mortgage Life Insurance interest rate isn’t higher than the interest rate on your mortgage. If it is, then your Life Insurance may not be able to cover your entire mortgage should you need to make a claim.
That’s why it always pays to speak to experts such as those on the team at Drewberry to make sure you’ve got the best Family Mortgage Insurance in place for you, your loved ones and your home.
Jeremy Cornford
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
What is Level Cover?
Level Mortgage Life Insurance is also set for a specific term, although unlike decreasing cover the benefit remains the same throughout this period.
It’s therefore particularly well-suited to interest-only mortgages, where the outstanding amount you owe remains fixed over time.
Others use Level Life Insurance to provide a fixed lump sum above the amount owed to the mortgage lender, leaving extra money to their family to cover costs such as bills or funeral expenses.
Comparing the two, as the amount you’re covered for falls over time with decreasing cover, it will often be cheaper than level cover. However, Decreasing Life Insurance won’t leave any additional payout for your family beyond paying off the outstanding mortgage loan.
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What is Whole of Life Insurance?
Many people have heard of Whole of Life Insurance without even realising it. Over-50s Life Insurance is a specific form of Whole of Life Cover.
In insurance terms, a Whole of Life policy does exactly what it sounds like it will do – cover you for your whole life, right up until your death. All you need to do is continue paying the monthly premiums until you pass away.
This is compared to Term Insurance, which only covers you for a set period of time and then ends, perhaps long enough to cover a mortgage debt or another outstanding loan.
Whole of Life Insurance is sometimes referred to as Whole of Life Assurance because it protects against an event that’s assured to happen, i.e. your eventual death, rather than an event that may happen during the policy’s term.
Given that you definitely secure a payout from Whole of Life Cover providing you keep paying the premiums, it can be a key Life Insurance policy for providing capital you know will be need such as for inheritance tax purposes or funeral expenses.
How Does Whole of Life Insurance Work?
If you compare the premiums for Whole of Life Assurance with Term Insurance, Whole of Life Cover is often more expensive. This is because the policyholder is guaranteed a payout at the end of the policy (i.e. when they eventually pass away).
The size of payouts for the two different types of Life Insurance are also very different. The average value of a Whole of Life claim paid in 2016 was around £4,748 compared to £75,062 for Term Insurance.
Over 50s Life Cover for Funerals
Whole of Life Cover is often used to cover funeral expenses. Royal London places the cost of a basic funeral at almost £3,675 in 2016, excluding any extras such as limousine hire and the memorial marker.
Given this, a funeral can be our last major expense, one we want to protect our families from having to pay out of their own pockets or having deducted from their inheritance.
Whole of Life Insurance and Inheritance Tax
You can also use Whole of Life Insurance to spare your family from the entire inheritance tax bill on your estate. To save your family from going through the hassle and expense of covering the bill out of their own pocket or taking out an executors loan, a Whole of Life Insurance policy written into trust can be used to cover an entire inheritance tax bill.
Inheritance tax on gifts left to your family
If you’ve made any gifts during your lifetime over and above your permitted annual IHT gift allowance, it’s important to realise that these won’t be deducted from your estate immediately. Rather, they’ll remain part of your estate for seven years after your death – they’ll only be a potentially exempt transfer or PET.
Gifts you make during your life are called gifts inter vivos. If you die within seven years of making such a gift, the IHT bill will shift from your estate to your beneficiary.
That might mean the gift you leave your loved ones today could land them with a big inheritance tax bill if you die within seven years, long after the asset(s) you’ve left them may have been spent.
Top Life Insurance Tips for Protecting Your Family
When looking for Life Insurance to cover your family, you have a number of options to make sure it’s tailored to your exact needs and circumstances. That’s where the advice of our insurance experts can come in handy to ensure you’ve got the best Life Insurance for you and your loved ones.
Single or Joint Family Life Insurance?
Spouses and civil partners, or those who have combined interests, often look to Joint Life Insurance to protect themselves and their families. While Joint Life Insurance is typically cheaper than two single policies, there’s a good reason for this. It’s because the policy will only pay out once on the death of the first partner. This is known as joint life first death insurance.
Most Joint Life Insurance is written on a first death basis, which can mean it’s not particularly suitable for providing comprehensive family protection. This is because it leaves the surviving partner without Life Insurance on the death of the first partner, meaning nothing can be passed down to children if the first payment is used to cover a mortgage.
The surviving partner may find getting re-insured at a later date far more expensive due to their older age and any health conditions they’ve suffered since taking out the first policy.
The alternative to Joint Life Insurance is two single Life Insurance policies, one for each partner. Although this will work out slightly more expensive you’ll be securing two payouts, making this potentially a better option for protecting your family if both parents pass away.
Kay Mechial
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Should I Add Critical Illness Cover to Family Life Insurance?
A major consideration when it comes to Life Insurance is whether or not you should include Critical Illness Cover, which will enhance your insurance so it pays out if you develop a serious illness.
If you do add this cover, the critical illness must be one of the ones specified by the insurer, with the most common claims being for cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
If you do unfortunately become critically ill, the policy pays out the same lump sum as if you’d passed away.
Having additional protection that will cover your mortgage, for instance, if you develop a serious illness or disability and can no longer provide for your family is attractive to many people. After all, for many people a critical illness could deal the same financial blow to the family as death, especially if the ill person is never able to work again.
Income Protection may be more suitable than Critical Illness Insurance…
If you’re worried about an illness or injury stopping you working and paying the mortgage on the family home or meeting other bills and expenses it may make more sense to opt for Income Protection alongside Life Insurance. This covers you for any illness or injury which stops you from working and will pay out a regular income for as long as you need it, rather than just one lump sum.
Should I opt for Indexation?
Another option you have is whether or not you want to index-link your Life Insurance so that your payout won’t be eroded by the effects of inflation. Life Insurance is a long-term product, so it’s inevitable that inflation will take a bite out of your benefit over time.
This is less of a concern with Decreasing Term Insurance, because it is used to protect a known debt such as a repayment mortgage with the benefit falling over time.
However, if you are trying to protect your family’s standard of living until they are of an age where they are self sufficient inflation could do a lot of damage to the real purchasing power of the benefit over time. In such cases opting to index your benefit amount means your family would have the same purchasing power whether a claim is made today or 20 years down the road.
Reviewable or Guaranteed Premiums?
With Life Insurance you can choose to either guarantee your premiums so that they stay fixed (unless you’ve indexed them, in which case there’ll be an inflationary increase).
The alternative is reviewable premiums, where the insurer can adjust your premiums each year as they see fit. The issue with this is that you never know how much your Family Life Insurance will cost year-on-year, and your premiums could rise significantly over the course of your policy.
Whether or not reviewable premiums are right for you depends on your circumstances, but they can increase the cost of cover significantly over time. Guaranteed premiums may start off more expensive, but they’ll usually work out cheaper over the life of the policy.
Sam Barr-Worsfold
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Setting Up Family Life Insurance
When you apply for your life insurance you’ll be medically underwritten but don’t worry – this isn’t as invasive as it sounds! All it entails is being asked a series of medical questions to assess your current state of health and therefore the level of risk you present to the insurer.
Although this is sufficient for insurers to price cover for the vast majority of applicants, in some instances further medical evidence may be required because of:
- Your age
- The size of the benefit you’re requesting
- Medical conditions/your state of health
- Your BMI
- Smoker status
- Family history of hereditary illnesses
- Any combination of the above.
While most applications don’t need additional information, some will. It’s difficult to say whether or not additional medical evidence will be required because the thresholds differ from insurer to insurer. Some are more lenient than others.
Also, it will vary depending on the applicant. For instance, an older individual will have lower benefit limits which trigger a full medical screening when compared to a younger person.
Victoria Slade
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
GP Reports, Nurse Screenings and Medicals…
The medical evidence an insurer might ask for could vary, from a simple GP report about your medical history all the way to a full blown medical.
These medical screenings are entirely paid for by the insurer and are usually held in private clinics across the country – wherever is the most convenient for you.
That means some clients get to go to Harley Street clinics for their full health MOTs, including blood tests, to ensure they’re in the best shape possible.
A step between requesting GP reports and an entire medical is a basic nurse’s screening. This involves a qualified nurse coming to your home or place of business and taking simple measurements such as height, weight and blood pressure.
Life Insurance with pre-existing conditions
It’s possible to get Life Insurance with pre-existing conditions 🤕 . It’s rare for insurers to deny coverage entirely or exclude a particular condition.
Instead, the likely outcome will be that the insurer will ‘load’ the baseline premium they would have charged a healthy person by a specific amount in pounds sterling per £1,000 of life cover you’re applying for. Alternatively, they may add a percentage loading to the baseline premium, say 50%, depending on your condition and its severity.
The thresholds for requiring medical evidence and applying loading vary. That’s why it’s worth getting advice from the experts at Drewberry as we’re best-placed to know which insurers offer the best terms for pre-existing conditions.
If you’re looking for poor health Life Insurance because you have pre-existing conditions, it’s important to realise that any online quotes you receive assume you’re in good health and the price will be based on this assumption.
If you’re in bad health then it’s better to speak to an insurance expert who’ll be able to find a provider that best suits your requirements. The team at Drewberry is here to help – drop us a call any time on 01273646484.
Matteo Mockler
Health & Wellbeing Expert at Drewberry
Can I Get Life Insurance Without a Medical?
Yes, you can get Life Insurance with no medical screening. Over-50s Life Insurance which is a specific Whole of Life Insurance plan rarely requires a medical and is usually advertised as ‘guaranteed acceptance’.
This is because providers understand the 100% likelihood of a claim providing the insured keeps paying the premiums, and so the cost of Whole of Life Insurance is priced accordingly.
For other types of cover, it’s perfectly possible that you’ll need no medical checks for Life Insurance other than the questions initially asked on the application.
This will be the case if you don’t trigger any of the insurer’s requirements for further medical evidence such as applying for a high benefit, a poor medical history, high BMI or a combination of these or any other conditions that prompt the need for a medical.
Insurer Claims Statistics
When choosing our personal protection we want to know it is going to pay out when we need it to.
By choosing a product or specific insurer from the menu below you will be able to view the claims payout rates for all of the main UK insurers for income protection, life insurance and critical illness insurance.
How Much Does Family Life Insurance Cost?
How much your family life cover will cost depends largely on a couple of key factors: the length of time and the amount you’re looking to insure yourself for as a benefit.
If you’re not sure about how much Life Insurance you need, why not give one of the team at Drewberry a call on 01273646484? We’ll be able to go through methodically and help you decide based on current liabilities and expenditure.
Rob Harvey
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Other factors that affect the cost of Life Insurance include:
- Your age – the older you are at the start of the policy, and when you want the policy to end, the higher the risk you represent and therefore the higher the cost of cover
- Your state of health – your health currently has a big impact on the cost of Family Life Insurance, particularly if you’re suffering from serious medical conditions such as diabetes or have a high BMI
- Your medical history – while less serious medical issues you’ve suffered in the past have little bearing on the cost of Life Insurance, more serious illnesses in the past, such as cancer, will increase the cost of cover
- Your smoking status – you can get Life Insurance for smokers, but the premiums will be higher due to the increased risk of death you present to the insurer.
Calculate the Cost of Family Life Insurance and Compare Quotes
You could go to each insurer individually and get Life Insurance quotes from all of them to find the best cover for you, but this would take a lot of time. Why not get a Life Insurance quote engine to compare the UK’s leading providers for you instead and save you all the legwork?
Drewberry has access to the entire UK market. While this means we can help you find the best price for Family Life Insurance, it will likely mean you’ll see a lot of options come up when you use our online Life Insurance comparison tool.
When faced with so many options it can be tricky to know which one is best, so why not ask one of our advisers for their top Life Insurance tips?
We’re only on the other end of the phone and our advice comes at no cost to you 😊 .
Josh Martin
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
The Importance of Life Insurance Trusts
If you’ve gone to all the trouble of protecting your loved ones with Family Life Insurance, the last thing you want to think about is them being faced with a big Inheritance Tax bill after you’re gone. If you’ve gone to all the trouble of carefully calculating how much your loved ones will need then you don’t want anything to take cash out of your family’s hands.
However, this may well happen if you haven’t taken steps to mitigate the inheritance tax on Life Insurance payouts that becomes due if your benefit is paid into your estate.
While Life Insurance is free from income tax, if you pass away and the Life Insurance policy pays out to your estate it may be subject to inheritance tax at 40%.
This bill must usually be paid before your family even gets access to your estate, which could cause significant financial hardship. Many people don’t realise this and could be in for a bit of a shock to receive such a big bill form HMRC at a difficult time.
Beware ⚠ inheritance tax on Family Income Benefit!
While Family Income Benefit will be paid free from income tax, it will be treated as one lump sum for inheritance tax purposes.
So even a relatively modest FIB benefit of £18,000 a year over 20 years would gross up to a £360,000 benefit overall – well in excess of the single person’s IHT nil-rate band threshold of £325,000.
You pay 40% tax on everything over this amount, so the tax due on your Life Insurance alone would be £14,000.
Your family may therefore have to find cash upfront to pay an inheritance tax bill on an income they may not receive until decades have passed.
Inheritance tax for unmarried couple with Life Insurance
If you’re not married then the inheritance tax implications on any wealth you leave behind, including Life Insurance payouts, are even greater.
While married couples can leave Life Insurance to each other usually IHT-free, there’s no such protection for cohabiting couples – you need to be married. With a rise in the number of families made up of unmarried couples named in each other’s Life Insurance, it’s rapidly becoming the case that the spousal exemption is available to fewer and fewer people.
Avoid Inheritance Tax by Writing Life Insurance into Trust
The way to ensure your Life Insurance is not paid into your estate and therefore removing the risk of it adding to any IHT liability you can opt to write your Life Insurance into trust. The trust can have multiple beneficiaries, so your spouse and your children, perhaps. Then because the money is never paid to your estate it’s all free from inheritance tax when the trust distributes it to the beneficiaries.
If you put your Life Insurance in trust, you may be able to avoid inheritance tax and stop your benefit being eaten up by the taxman.
Putting your Life Insurance into trust is absolutely free and Drewberry’s experts can help you do this as part of the service. It’s not as complicated as it might sound – to get the trust set up we’ll just need few signatures on a couple of forms. Why not ask about advice on Life Insurance trusts today.
Sam Carr
Independent Protection Expert at Drewberry
Get Expert Advice on Life Insurance for Your Family
Drewberry’s team of expert advisers arrange cover to protect clients’ families every day, so we’ve got a wealth of Life Insurance tips and tricks to pass on to make sure you get the best deal.
The way we work means we never charge you a fee for that advice – you effectively get all of our experience for free. Our advisers are here to help so all you need to do is drop us a line on 01273646484.
Tom Conner
Director at Drewberry
