The Truth About Guaranteed Issue Life Policies

September 4, 2010 by  
Filed under life insurance

Have you ever watched your TV set or surfed around the internet? Sure you have! Have you seen ads for guaranteed issue life insurance that promises not to turn anybody down? I would be that you have seen those ads while you were watching TV or on the net. But have you ever wondered if those ads were true or to good to be true?

A life insurance company takes a risk every time they issue a policy. But if they offer to cover everybody, without doing any health underwriting, that seems like it would be bad business. At first glance, it seems like they would go broke very fast. But since few insurers are giong broke, they must have a way to profit from this generous offer.

One simple way that insurers cover themselves is by limiting these offers to smaller policies. The top range is usually a ten or twenty thousand dollars. This prevents people, who have a terminal illness, from making their families rich when they pass away.

But if the insurers sell a lot of policies, even ten or twenty thousand dollars is risky. If they attract clients who are less healthy, they could still lose millions when they spread it out over all of their customers. They prevent this by having a waiting period on the policy. The beneficiary will not collect the whole death benefit if the insured person dies before this term is up.

You must understand that different companies will have different terms on their policies. Some insurers offer to give back the premiums if the insured person does not survive the waiting period. Some insurers may pay out a fraction of the policy. Some have a combination of these things.

The terms could be complicated. For example, they may pay half the death benefit if the person survives 24 months, but not 36 months. They may refund premiums, with interest, if the insured person survives 12 months. They could have a variety of terms like this, but you get the idea. This is called a graded death benefit. In other words, the death benefit rises as more time elapses after the policy has been issued.

In order to get the best life insurance policy for you, if it is guaranteed issue or not, it is important to shop around for the best rates and deals.

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