Life opinions on my life assurance cover please

S

susanmcna

Guest
Hi there,

I am reviewing my life assurance cover as it is due in March and would love to decrease our monthly direct debit. I would welcome any comments or suggestions as to whether this is possible without adversely affecting our cover.

Myself and my husband have 3 children aged 11, 9 and 6. I am a stay at home mum. Husband earns circa 60,000, public sector. He has income protection. We have a mortgage of circa 130,000 and have no other debts. We have no savings.

We took out Life Assurance with E**le S**r ten years ago. It is indexed linked.

My husband is insured for 422,130 euros, serious illness (stand alone) at 140,711 euros.

I am insured for 422,130 euros, serious illness (stand alone) at 211,065 euros. His dad died of bowel cancer age 60 hence the difference in our serious illness cover.

We pay 276e per month up from 257e (2009) and 234e (2008).

Anyone know if this is good value for money? Thanks in advance, Sue
 
Susan, its impossible to tell without giving some more information, your dates of birth, your smoker status, how long is left on the policy, whether the specified illness cover is on a standalone or accelerated basis etc. Do you feel you are over insured? Also you indicated that your husband may have been loaded.

Life assurance rates have decreased so it is possible you could get cheaper cover. The best thing to do is ring an independent insurance broker who can see the prices of all the companies based on your details to get an indication of savings you could make.



www.CheaperLifeAssurance.ie
 
Can a good independent broker complete a satisfactory fact find and present an accomplished recommendation over the phone?
 
Hi StevieC,

We are in our early 40s, non smokers. I went searching and found a letter from 2002 (start of policy) stating that we have

"300,000e life cover and 150,000 stand alone serious illness cover over 25 years linked to inflation, with the option to continue the cover at the end of the term, costs 166.37p/m."

Its dual and a stand alone plan type. We have free child serious illness benefit up to 25,000euro and free child death benefit of 4000e.

Is there any site online that would give me a list of independant life assurance brokers?

I guess after 10 years of this policy, I am just looking for reassurance that it is adequate cover and we are not being fleeced. Thanks for replying, Sue
 
That information is useful but to give an accurate assessment of your insurance needs, you would need to sit down and go through it with a qualified independent broker.

The fact that you are paying so much for life cover but do not have any savings is a bit of a worry.

On the life side, just say your husband died yesterday, you would have a lump sum of around €300,000 (after mortgage is cleared) to replace his income until the children have grown up. €300,000 invested at 4% net would give you a regular monthly income of around €1,500 for 20 years (approx figures)

Would €1,500 be enough?

When people buy (are sold) life insurance they usually just go on the advice of the seller who sometimes just picks a figure out of the air. If you are reviewing your policies, you might as well do it properly.

Personally I do not see a great benefit to indexation. Instead I would put what you need in place now for a fixed term. As you get older the amount of cover you will need reduces - with indexation, your cover actually increases.

As for a list of independent brokers, I do not know if there is one - a google search should come up with some in your locality.
 
Thanks NorfBan,-Thats a bit depressing about only having 1,500e per month if I bump off my husband.

Regarding having no savings-we are aiming to have our mortgage paid off in aprox 7 years by making extra payments. Thus freeing up around 2,000e per month which would be directed immediately into college funds for kids, then savings....

I know a possibly more prudent approach is to keep mortgage going longer and set up a savings account in tandem. But we like the idea of being mortgage free by 50. We are optimistic that neither of us will die in the next 50 years.

The life assurance is in place to give one of us an income if we did die prematurely and to provide cash if one of us gets sick (because we have no savings). I think I have just reassured myself about the necessity of our life policy!
 
Susan

I tend to agree with Norfbank about the usefulness of inflation and this is something an immediate saving could be made on.

The following link with bring you to a list of members of the Irish Brokers Association in your area
[broken link removed]

or alternatively do a google search.



www.CheaperLifeAssurance.ie
 
Thanks StevieC, I can easily find a local broker from that site.
How much would a consultation cost? Is it done over the phone or in person?
 
It depends Susan. Some brokers will do a consultation for free and get paid commission from the relevant company if you buy a product through them. Others may charge a fee and this varies from broker to broker. If they charge a fee make sure you know what it is in advance of any meeting.

If you are doing a full financial review a fee based broker may be preferable but if its just this one area you wish to look at then I am pretty confident that most brokers can find you a saving relatively easily, so try and get a free consultation. Most brokers will be able to recommend something over the phone but if you want a full financial review it may be best to sit down with someone.




www.CheaperLifeAssurance.ie
 
StevieC said:
The following link with bring you to a list of members of the Irish Brokers Association in your area
[broken link removed]
Click to expand...

Members of the Professional Insurance Brokers Association can be found here:



Both associations offer similar services.
 
susanmcna said:
Hi there,

Husband earns circa 60,000, public sector.

You would appear well insured on the basis that you are not in paid employment, but what hasn't been picked up on is the fact that your husband is in the public sector. I presume his employment in pensionable and on that basis I would suspect that he is covered for death benefits. Max is 4 times salary. Check this out first! It should be factored into any financial review you get.

Below is the best place to look for advisors. Authorised Advisors tend to be quicker to offer a fee based service as they are licenced to research and advise on insurance and investment products offered by providers they do not have agencies with. As far as I know multi agency intermediaries and tied agents are only licenced to advise on products offered by those insurers they have agencies with.

Patrick

[broken link removed]
Click to expand...
 
A point I'd make about choosing a financial advisor / broker is that while the various registers linked above are useful, they are simply that - registers. Within each of those registers there are good and not-so-good brokers and a register won't identify which is which for you. If you can at all, I'd always suggest getting a recommendation from a trusted friend or family member who has actually used the particular advisor before.

Also - on the subject of choosing between an Authorised Advisor and a Multi-Agency Intermediary, an Authorised Advisor (AA) is obliged to offer you the choice of all companies operating in the Irish market for the particular product you are discussing. So if talking to an AA, make sure to ask how companies that don't pay commission to brokers compare for your requirement - ask about Quinn Life, Danica Life, Acorn Life - if you get the feeling that the AA doesn't know much about these companies' products or didn't consider them when making a recommendation, walk away as the AA is obviously not a bona fide AA and is really a de facto Multi Agency Intermediary.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I chose to register my own firm as a Multi Agency Intermediary when the distinction between the two was first brought into being.)
 
Hi Guys, Thanks for your replies.

I have been trying without success all week to get my broker to ring me back.

I did ring a very pleasent independant broker from that list. She reckoned that we had good deal for the cover we were on and couldn't beat it for price. She suggested we halt the index linking every 2nd year effectively getting a price freeze every 2nd year. She thought my husabands cover was on the low side and cited that it should be 10-15 times his income (60 grand). She suggested that we increased it from 400,000 to 900,000 at an extra cost of circa 90euro/month. This would give a monthly income of circa 3,000 euro in the event of an early demise, handy as I would have no savings for college education. So we were a bit depressed about being underinsured....

Then,.... I remembered that he paid into a widow and orphans fund. He is public sector, PRSI D. Then I read the last two posters comments-thank you so much.

So I guess I now need to dig out info (nightmare) about what I would be entitled to from his workplace if husband was to die when kids are young.. Only then can we work out if we are over or under insured for life cover.

And I need to keep ringing my assuranc broker.....

Thanks for the comments and help.
 
Also, in fairness to the nice independant broker lady, I never mentioned that my husband was public sector because I didn't think it was significant at that time. Sue
 
Danica only sell Pensions and Investment bonds at present to the best of my knowledge.
 
Yes neither Quinn nor Danica do Life Cover so the AA probably wouldn't mention these for the query above.

Patrick
 
I would recommend the Irish Mortgage Company(01 6691000). I have found them very useful and they have had to move away from doing just mortgages for obvious reasons. I don't have any ties with them.
 
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