Life cover is a very important policy that pays out a tax-free lump sum or regular payments in the event of your death or being diagnosed with a terminal illness while covered by the policy (provided your life expectancy is less than 12 months). Terminal Illness Benefit is an additional benefit that most insurers add to life cover for free. As a breadwinner, it’s designed to provide you with the reassurance that your dependents will be financially covered after you are gone and you’re no longer there to provide for them. The amount of money paid out on claim depends on the level of cover you buy.

There are two main types of life covers:

This a term life cover and runs for a fixed period of time, for example, 5, 10, 25 years. Term life insurance only pays out if you die during the term of the policy. There is no surrender value nor a lump sum payable at the end of the policy term. There are mainly three different types of life insurance: level term life cover, increasing term life cover, and decreasing term life cover. The ideal type of life insurance for you is based on whether you want your cover amount to increase, decrease, or remain the same. If you choose increasing cover, your premiums will also increase.

Life Insurance has a number of variants and the type of cover ideal for you depends on what you wanted protected:

This is a Whole-Of-Life cover which means the policy persists for life and will pay out no matter when you die, as long as you keep up with your premium payments. Sadly, death is one of life’s certainties, meaning a pay-out is guaranteed – as a result, premiums for life assurance policies tend to be a lot higher than for life insurance policies.