Do you have life insurance?
A staggering number of parents don't have life insurance, according to new research. Are you one of them?
Almost half of UK parents don’t have a life insurance policy, according to new research.
A survey of over 4,000 parents by CompareTheMarket found that 49% of those with children under 18 don’t have life insurance. Worryingly, a whopping 64% of parents don’t have a legally valid will either, while only one in five (21%) parents are covered for critical illness.
Who needs life insurance?
What's so troubling about this result is that parents are a classic example of the sort of person who absolutely needs to have some form of life insurance.
Not everyone needs life insurance, but if you have someone that would be left worse off financially if you died, such as a spouse or child, then it is absolutely essential.
Just stop and think about what would happen to your loved ones if you and your salary suddenly disappeared. Would your partner be able to afford the mortgage on their own? Would they be able to support your children?
Why people don't have life insurance
According to the study, one of the biggest barriers is the perceived cost. Half of those that haven't got a policy said the reason was that it was simply too expensive and they couldn’t afford to make monthly repayments. However, as 54% admitted that they don’t actually know how much a policy costs, there could be some confusion surrounding it.
Indeed, it's perfectly possible to have a life insurance policy that costs you less than £10 a month. Let's take the example of a 30-year-old male who doesn't smoke. With Beagle Street he could get a £150,000 decreasing cover policy over a 30-year term that would cost just £7.22 a month. Not bad for three decades of certainty that his loved ones would be protected!
Perhaps the modest take up in life insurance is down to misinformation and a lack of clarity from insurers. Just over a third of uninsured parents admitted that they would consider taking out a policy if the application process was simple and the level of payout their loved ones would receive upon their death was clearer.
But we want to know about you, the loveMONEY readers? Do you have a life insurance policy? Let us know by voting in the poll below!
Find the right life insurance policy for you right now at the loveMONEY life insurance centre
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