Life insurance has two attributes that we care about. The first is the insurance. That’s the death claim cheque you get when you pass away. And the second is the premiums or the cost of the life insurance.

We saw in part one of this video series that from an insurance perspective, all life insurance policies are the same. A death claim cheque from one type of life insurance is exactly the same as a death claim cheque from another type of insurance.

If you recall from our previous videos, permanent life insurance is defined by a policy that has premiums that are level for life. In contrast with term insurance which is very inexpensive now but becomes more unaffordable as we get older.

In this video we’re going to look at the best type of life insurance. Now if you recall from our earlier videos, the different types of life insurance are built on different costs structures over different periods of time. And therefore, the best type of life insurance generally speaking is that which is cheapest over the period of time that you need it for.

In my experience, the biggest problem that most consumers have with purchasing life insurance online, is very simply a nagging feeling that they didn’t get everything right.

Let’s look at the best term life insurance policies available in Canada. Now from a death claim perspective, one term policy is the same as another. A cheque for a million dollars from one policy is the same as a cheque for a million dollars from another policy. They’re both the same.

In today’s video, we’re going to look at convertible term life insurance.
Now, this is becoming increasingly important as providers are starting to roll out term life insurance policies that are not convertible. So the question of course is, do you care?

In the first five years of a term life insurance policy with the exchange option, you can do a direct swap for a longer-term without any medical evidence.
So if you’ve purchased a term 10 policy with the exchange option, in the first five years you can swap it out for a brand new term 20 or term 30.

In today’s video, we are going to look at three common riders found in many term life insurance policies in Canada.

Importantly, the definition that gets used is the definition used by the insurance company, not consumers. So it’s possible that a consumer might say “well I’m not a smoker” and the insurance company says “in our context you are” and you’re going to qualify at smoking premiums.

Consumers will traditionally categorize life insurance policies either into medical exam policies or no medical exam policies. But in practice, it’s much more nuanced than that.

A medical exam these days consists almost entirely of a simple phone interview with a paramedical person, generally takes around 20 minutes and the purpose of the medical interview is simply for you to disclose your medical history to the insurance company.

If you recently had a birthday, or it's been about six months since your last birthday, you should read this article for a strategy to lock in your life insurance premiums at one year younger.