Janani asked:


Insurance

The word “Insurance” refers to the promise of repayment of the money in the case of any loss to the insurer. The insurer may be an individual or a company who have made prepayment to an insurance company for a secured life. Insurance also provides “security against future loss”. We cannot predict the timing and the occurrence of loss. So we need insurance plan in order to protect ourselves from the future loss. An insurance policy provides financial assistance to support medical, personal and social services.

Types of Insurance

Different types of Insurance plans are offered based on your needs. Some of them are

• Life Insurance

• Health Insurance

• Dental Insurance

• Property insurance

• Automobile insurance

Life Insurance

Life insurance policy is sometimes referred as life assurance, provides reimbursement of money to the decedent’s family or other designated. Life insurance gives security for you and your family. The life insurance may be permanent insurance or term insurance. The term insurance is somewhat expensive and complicated. Since the duration of this term insurance is limited to 1 to 10 or 20 years. If something happens to the insurer during this course of time, the death benefit is given to the recipient. If nothing happens at the end of term, they will not be benefited fully. Whereas the permanent life insurance is more secure and gives protection throughout the lifetime. If you cancel the policy then the accumulated cash will be yours and you can make use of it.

Health Insurance

Health insurance is a type of insurance, which covers medical costs of the insured when the insurer becomes sick or injured. Health insurance plans offered in two categories. They are individual and group insurance policy. The individual plans covers health costs for a single person whereas the group health insurance plan covers medical coverage for the entire family.

Dental Insurance

Like health insurance, dental insurance covers dental costs for an individual or group. The costs include normal dental care cost as well as damage to teeth in an accident. Most people in the United States are getting along with their health insurance plans from their employer. Whatever may be the type of policy, it provides you a financial aid for you and your child in future. Dental insurance covers both individual and group. The group dental is more economical and beneficial than the individual.

Automobile insurance

The insurance which legal liability against driver or incase of loss and damage to the vehicle.

Property insurance

Property insurance gives protection against your property. This includes specialized forms of insurance like fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance etc.

Need for Insurance

For secure life, we require insurance plans. Because anything may happen tomorrow, the things are unpredictable. Insurance makes you to prepare for future. The health insurance plans are provided to in order to meet the expense of any health problem.Now a day’s health and dental coverage for an individual/family becomes more expensive. So it is advisable to have a health insurance plan. You can get reasonable price on your individual health and dental plan through an employer.

Whatever may be the insurance plans it provides “protection against future loss”.



Lee

Nail Ramp asked:


Whenever you think of opting for Life Insurance Policies, the general image or idea that flashes on your mind is that of a salesman trying to entice to purchase a policy under his company name. Now if you are a completely new customer and have no idea as to what kind of deal suits your need, you end up making the wrong policy. Life insurance is also used to pay death taxes and estate settlement costs, to shift wealth from one generation to another or to benefit selected charities.. Most people go in for a life insurance policy to ensure that upon his/her death, the beneficiary is financially secured. Life insurance policies are typically divided into two major types: term insurance and permanent insurance. From these two basic policies, the insurance industry has developed a number of products using the same essential principals. People on a general basis would consider a life insurance policy to have no time limits, which always isn’t the case. Lets discuss the two types of life insurance policies in detail.

Term Life Insurance: A term life insurance policy pays the beneficiary or the nominee the due amount only if the insured individual expires during the time/ tenure of the policy. No benefits are paid if the insured exists beyond the term of the policy and there is no investment or cash value feature inherent in this type of policy. For this reason, term insurance policies will carry the lowest premiums in the earlier years of the policy. However, as an individual gets older, term insurance gets more expensive. A major problem with term insurance is that with the expiry of the insurance policy, the insured would need to replace or renew the policy at a higher premium.

Permanent Life Insurance: A permanent life insurance policy, often referred to as whole life insurance, is intended to provide protection throughout the life of the insured. It is an alternative to term life insurance and the premium is a bit costlier too. This is done to maintain the premium level while the policy is in place. Moreover as the insured keeps getting older the mortality rates increases. A couple of permanent life insurance policies are the universal life insurance policy and variable life insurance policy. A universal life insurance policy provides flexibility for the insured by allowing the individual to select the premium they would like to pay. Variable life insurance is a policy in which the insured has the ability to direct the investments of the cash surrender value to achieve potentially higher returns than could otherwise be realized. If the investments perform well, the death benefit will increase.

Determining your need prior to choosing a policy is important. Insurance is basically done when you have young members in your family, there is one bread earner and insufficient savings to meet the demands of the survivors in case of a disaster. The type and amount of insurance which is being considered must also be predicated on the affordability of the premiums. A policy which is too expensive to carry may result in an early termination. The insured would then need to reapply, usually at higher costs, and potentially subject him or herself to a physical examination to determine overall health.

Going by the current premium values in the market the top 5 insurance companies would be ranked as

1) ICICI Prudential Life Insurance

2) Birla Sun Life Insurance

3) HDFC Standard Life Insurance

4) Life Insurance Corporate of India

5) Bharti-Axa Life India.

Life insurance is a very complex product and, yet, is essential for many individuals in order to protect their loved ones or meet the other needs for which it is being purchased.



Anita

Insure.com asked:


A relative has just died. He had a life insurance policy with you listed as the beneficiary. There’s just one problem: the life insurance policy is missing. You have no idea which insurance company wrote it.

If you find the missing life insurance policy in the future, are you still eligible to receive the death benefit?

Hope they paid their insurance bills

If you’re a beneficiary and you find the lost life insurance policy shortly after the insured dies (within six months to a year, for example), claiming the death benefit should be trouble-free.

First, determine if the insured had term or permanent life insurance. If the insured held a term policy, you’ll receive the death benefit if he died before the end of the policy term. If he died after the policy expiration date, you would get nothing.

If the insured had a permanent life policy, you’ll receive the money if the death occurred while the policy was “in force,” meaning all premium payments were made up until the time of death. If the death was a while ago, you’ll receive the benefit with interest from the date of death.

If the life insurance policy lapsed — meaning the insured stopped making premium payments before he died — there’s a chance you might get nothing. When a permanent life insurance policy lapses, most insurance companies switch its status from permanent insurance to one of two options:

“Extended term” — The insurance company uses the cash value of the policy to buy a term life insurance policy for the same death benefit using the cash value of the policy. The death benefit will continue for the longest period the cash value will purchase.

“Reduced paid up” — The insurance company will keep the policy in force permanently, but will reduce the death benefit.

Gerry Brogla, an actuary for State Farm, says in the majority of the cases at his company, the permanent policy continues as extended term if it lapses. At State Farm, extended term is the default option for most permanent policies.

If the policy lapses, and the extended-term period expires before the insured dies, the policy is worthless and the life insurance beneficiary will get nothing. If the insured dies before the extended-term period is up, the beneficiary will receive the death benefit. If the policy lapsed because the insured died (thus ending premium payments and causing the insurance to be placed in extended-term status), the beneficiary will still collect the full death benefit, regardless of when the extended term was up. The beneficiary always needs to supply the insurance company with a death certificate to verify the date of death.

There is no time limit during which a life insurance beneficiary must step forward to collect the money, according to Jack Dolan, spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers. “If a person shows up 30 years after [the insured's] death, the company still makes good on it,” Dolan assures.

What happens if no one ever reports the death?

If the insured dies and the insurance company does not learn of the death, the policy lapses. Insurance companies will take steps to find out why a policyholder stopped making payments.

When an insurance company stops getting payments, it sends letters to the insured informing him the policy may lapse as a result of unpaid premiums. If the letters go unanswered, the company might initiate a search to find the insured. If that comes up empty, the company will then lapse the policy.

If a beneficiary to a policy never steps forward, it unfortunately means the insured paid money to a policy throughout his life and his beneficiaries never see a penny. This is why its a good idea to make sure beneficiaries are aware of any life insurance policies you have.

If you’re lucky, the state may have your money

In some cases when a beneficiary fails to claim a death benefit for several years, the money is transferred to the state where the insurance policy was purchased under the escheat laws.

If a company knows an insured died and it cannot find the beneficiary, it must turn the full death benefit over to the state comptroller’s department within three to five years of the insured’s death. The money is transferred to the state where the insured bought the policy. The money is considered “unclaimed property” and gets lumped in with dormant bank accounts and uncollected rent deposits. The comptroller’s department maintains a database that lists the names and addresses of lost life insurance beneficiaries.

Many states will try to contact life insurance beneficiaries in an effort to pay the death benefits. In Texas, for example, the names and addresses of the beneficiaries are published annually in each county in the state. In New York, the Web site of the New York State Comptroller’s Office of Unclaimed Funds has an online search to find any unclaimed death benefits owed to you. You can find out the procedures in your state by contacting the office of your state comptroller or treasurer.

Keep in mind your chances of finding the policy with the state are slim. The insurance company has no obligation to hand the money over to the state if it’s unaware the insured died. In most cases, it’s the beneficiary who contacts the insurance company.

Also, the insurer only transfers the money to the state three to five years after it cannot find the beneficiary but knows the insured died. If the state doesn’t have the death benefit, it’s likely the insurer is still looking for the beneficiary or doesn’t know the policyholder has died.

Unclaimed death benefits are rarely transferred to the state. Dave Potter, a spokesman for Hartford Life, says less than 1 percent of his company’s death benefits go unclaimed.

Del Chance, a life insurance claims manager at State Farm, says, “Turning over life policy benefits to an individual state after the death of an insured is extremely rare. State Farm utilizes their own search techniques as well as outside vendors to locate lost beneficiaries in the event of the death of one of our insureds. By and large these procedures have always located the beneficiary.

Tips for making sure your life insurance beneficiaries get your death benefit:

1. Give your beneficiaries your policy information. It can be a difficult and awkward conversation, but an important one.

2. Keep all your financial records (especially your life insurance policies) in one place. Don’t force your beneficiaries to search your house from top to bottom after you die.

Tips for looking for lost life insurance policies:

1. Go through canceled checks or contact your relative’s bank for copies of old checks. Look for checks made out to insurance companies.

2. Ask those who may have known about your relative’s finances. Speak with the relative’s lawyer, banker or accountant. Also contact the relative’s insurance agent.

3. Contact your relative’s past employers. They might know of possible group life insurance. The insured might have also purchased supplemental life insurance through work.

4. Check the mail for a year. Premium bills and policy-status notices are usually sent annually.

5. Look at income tax returns for the past two years. Check for interest income from policies or expenses paid to life insurance companies.

6. Contact the Medical Information Bureau. If your relative bought life insurance fairly recently, there might be a trail of the companies to which he applied. The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) maintains a database that might show if insurers requested your relative’s medical information within the past seven years. Record searches can be requested through the MIB’s Policy Locator Service and cost $75. The MIB says that nearly 30 percent of searches turn up leads.



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