licants for life insurance can be insured within 48 hours and at the premium quoted – but 2 in 3 applicants are faced with delays plus the prospect of having their premium loaded.

So who are the lucky ones? Basically, you’ll have to be as fit as a flea with no family history of serious illness, under 45, in an office type job and probably applying for less than £250,000 cover. For everyone else there is going to be some hassle.

When an insurer provides an initial quote for life insurance, all they know is your age, sex and smoking status. They use these details to make an initial prediction of how long you are likely to live and on that basis they give you an initial quotation. They call it their “Standard Terms”.

If you want to progress your application you’ll have a multi-page application to complete. This isn’t as daunting as it may seem, as most online operators take your details over the phone and send you a copy of the completed application for you to check over. But the questions are extensive and if you miss out anything that later turns out to be significant, your insurance may well be invalidated. So be warned and take care!

The insurers use your application details to look out for anything that signals current or future concerns about your health or life style. Besides the obvious questions that reveal health problems, they also evaluate your weight, alcohol and nicotine intake, and any potentially inherited health problems. So if your father died of a heart attack or mother died from breast cancer, they’ll be concerned.

Then there’s your life style. If you’re in a type of job where accidents do happen, construction jobs are a good example, or you are involved in any form of dangerous sport or flying, your premium is in line for loading. They’ll even want to know whether you regularly travel to countries that are known to represent health risks for visitors. And whilst the law doesn’t allow discrimination against same sex relationships, the insurance companies will almost always insist on a medical for these applicants.

Insurers freely admit that the number of questions they ask is increasing. They claim it’s to reduce the number of claims they refuse. Whilst that may be partly true, the trend has also coincided with an increase in the proportion of applicants who are seeing their premiums loaded. Some years ago it was nearer 40% – today’s for some insurers the level is virtually 66%.

How much extra might you be asked to pay? That’s a bit like how long is a piece of string. But to give you a feel, a woman aged 40 receiving medical treatment for post-natal depression was recently faced with a 50% loading on an initial quotation of £7.60. A woman whose mother had breast cancer similarly faced a 50 % loading. Seriously overweight people can also expect loadings of 50% to 100% or even refusal.

Faced with a loading what can you do? It’s important to appreciate that the insurance companies giving the cheapest initial quote are also likely to have particularly choosey medical criteria. That’s how they keep their quoted prices low. So if you’re faced with a loading, the best advice is shop around, Try one of the more expensive providers like Friends Provident who are sometimes a bit more lenient.

Whilst this may sound overly complicated, remember that over the years, an extra £10 a month on a 25 year policy represents £3,000 of your hard earned money. If you don’t have the experience or time to do this, and after few of us do, speak to an online life insurance broker.

Competition is high on the Internet and online brokers will normally reduce your premium by cutting their commission. Their systems are also well versed in finding alternative providers to alleviate loading problems. So keep things simple. Let your keyboard fingers do the walking and let the online broker do all the hard work!

Termlife insurance is considered as the simplest and the cheapest form of a life insurance. It covers you for a specified period of time. The premium rate in that time frame would be constant. Like every other insurance it is an agreement between the insured person and the insurance company. Find out some of the features of the term life insurance that are given below.

? A pre determined amount has to be paid by the insured to the insurer.

? The company would pay the amount to the beneficiaries on the even of death of the insured. This condition is valid only up until the premiums are still being paid.

There are a number of reasons for purchasing a life insurance. This can be to sustain your spouse’s standard of living, to cover debts and liabilities, or just to provide for the financial well-being of your family or business.

Before you go for an insurance policy, you should know the differences in different term life insurance quotes. Many factors are responsible in deciding these rates. The most important factor in deciding the term insurance rate is your health. A person with a good health would pay a lower premium and a person with a bad health will pay a higher premium.

Before term life insurance quotes are reached, each insurance application undergoes the insurance company’s underwriting process, which basically entails a review of the life insurance medical exam. In short, a healthy person will have more chances of getting cheap life insurance rates than an unhealthy one. Some of the factors that go into determining whether a person is healthy or not include the following:

? Different companies have different plans for different height to weight ratio.

? Cholesterol Levels: If you have high cholesterol levels, your chances of getting cheap life insurance rates are significantly lower.

? A bad medical history also lowers don the chances of getting a cheap life insurance rate.

? Lifestyle: If you are interested in adventure sports, such as scuba diving, bungee jumping, and the like, the risk of you getting into a fatal accident are high. This risk is also significantly higher in case you are employed in a hazardous job, such as a fireman or a construction worker at a high-rise building site. As such, a person’s lifestyle dictates to a large extent their life insurance premium.

? Cheap life insurance rates might not be valid in case the company finds out that you suffer from high blood pressure or high stress levels then they might increase your premium amount.

? Miscellaneous Factors: While the factors listed above are some of the more important ones that have an impact on the insurance premium rates, there are countless other aspects that may have an equal, if not more significant, effect. These include a poor personal medical history, poor driving record, immediate environmental factors, smoking and drinking habits, among others.

In today’s markets, a customer is truly spoilt for choice, and the case is no different when it comes to picking an insurance company. Two insurance companies may offer the same product, but will probably differ in a lot of ways. The most important factors that goes into choosing an insurance company is a proven track record and the range of products and prices offered by them. Other factors include the underwriting process (one company may consider applications from high-risk clients, such as recovering cancer patients, while another may not), customer service provided, and the general flexibility offered by it.

Another piece of advice, always deal with a licensed agent.

When applying for life insurance many life insurance companies require you to answer medical related questions and / or to undergo a medical examination as part of the application process. These medical examinations are often required as proof of your health status as given on your application form. They are used by the life insurance companies to help them decide upon the insurance premium you’ll be charged for your life cover, and in some instances, as to whether you will be given life insurance at all.

Life insurance products where intensive medical questioning and / or a medical examination is required effectively penalise you for pre-existing medical conditions, pushing up the cost of life cover. Taking a medical examination may also prove stressful, especially for the elderly who are looking for life insurance coverage later on in life.

Increasingly though, life insurance companies are offering life insurance products where no medical is required. What’s more some life companies even guarantee acceptance before you apply!

What is no medical life insurance?

No medical life insurance, to use a well-known phrase, does exactly what it says on the tin! It is a life insurance product where no medical examination is required. You may not even have to answer medical questions and yet still be guaranteed acceptance for life insurance. No medical life insurance is open to people of all ages, so whether you’re 20 or 65, no medical life insurance can give you the peace of mind that your loved ones will be financially secure in the event of your death during the term of the life insurance policy.

You may be questioning the ethics of such a life insurance scheme at this point? If you are don’t worry! No medical life insurance is all above board, and is in fact offered by some of the most well-known insurance companies in the UK. Even supermarkets like Tesco for instance now have a no medical insurance policy available for the over 60s.

The premiums on life insurance where no medical is required are competitive too. Life cover can be acquired for as little as £7 per month, with some life companies guaranteeing that the insurance premiums on no medical policies will not rise through the life of the policy. Of course, how much you pay into the life insurance policy each month will affect the final life insurance total available upon death. Generally, there are no issues involved with increasing the life insurance premiums later on of your own accord should you wish to do so.