Life Insurance Australia

What is life insurance?

Life Insurance provides a lump sum to the family in the event of death or terminal illness of the life insured.

The most popular type of life insurance in Australia is term life insurance. It is available to people aged between 17 and 69 and can usually be renewed until the policy anniversary date before their 99th birthday.

Why do you need life cover insurance?

Life insurance helps to protect the life insured's family by providing a lump sum in the event of death, which could be used to meet needs such as:

• Children's education costs
• Mortgage and other loan repayments
• Enabling the life insured's business to keep running
• Meeting the family's ongoing income needs

You are young and think you don't need life cover? Here is the recent story:
Children orphaned by birthday trip tragedy - The Age, August 2011

Life Insurance or Life Assurance?

When looking to insure our lives the specific uses of the terms "life insurance" and "life assurance" are sometimes confusing.

In general, "insurance" refers to providing cover for an event that might happen (fire, theft, flood, etc.), while "assurance" is the provision of cover for an event that is certain to happen. Death is an event which is certain to happen and thus it should be called life assurance, however in Australia both forms of coverage are called "insurance", because they mean basically the same. According to Princeton lexical database WordNet - life assurance or life insurance is an insurance paid to named beneficiaries when the insured person dies ("in England they call life insurance life assurance").

How much life cover do I need?

There is an old saying 'A debt should not out last the person who created it'. So add up all you current debts to one figure and this is our starting point how much you should insure for.

From here, depending on individual circumstances we might add in educations cost of children, funeral costs and medical expenses. The last but not the least point to take into account is the future income requirements to the family. This last point is very important as many families struggle to survive after the death of the main income generator into the family.

Check our guide about "Types of life insurance" if you want more information.

How much does life insurance cost per month in Australia?

There is no simple answer to that question. There are too many variables. The 4 major ones are:

• What is your age?
• What is your gender?
• Are you smoker or non-smoker?
• What amount of insurance?

Here at Rate Detective we try to take these 4 major factors into place when designing our life insurance quotes estimates. However exact premium may vary depending on occupational type and past and present medical history. All insurance applications require underwriting assessment and only at that time can a formal offer be made.

Overall life insurance is cheap compared to the expenses you have if worst happens.

Next, who offers best life insurance in Australia? >>