Life insurance policies offer you peace of mind knowing your loved ones will be taken care of financially after your passing, paying final expenses and debts that arise after death. A financial professional can assist in explaining various policies available and suggest options tailored specifically for you and your needs.

Life insurance exists primarily to replace income after someone dies, typically by offering survivors of the insured a benefit payable upon his/her demise which can then be used to cover funeral costs, pay off debts or replace lost income. Some policies also offer living benefits that can be utilized before their demise.

Life insurance can be purchased individually or through groups such as employers or professional organizations, with most applications requiring a medical exam and related health information; some insurers provide „accelerated underwriting,” which bypasses this step and can approve applicants within days or weeks.

As your type of life insurance varies, so will its death benefit and cash value. In everyday life insurance , term life policies’ death benefit and policy face amount remain constant over the duration of the contract while permanent life (also called whole life or universal life) policies offer both permanent death benefits as well as an increasing cash value over time using an actuarial calculation rather than actual growth in investments.

Some permanent life insurance policies offer flexible death benefit options that enable policy owners to modify or adjust the death benefit throughout their policy’s term, through changes that require underwriting review. This could involve changing policy provisions which might necessitate new underwriting review processes.

Permanent life insurance policies that offer cash values as part of their death benefit package also allow customers to borrow or withdraw funds as necessary, using it either to pay premiums or fund other investments such as retirement accounts. But if all the cash value has been utilized and premiums remain unpaid, the policy could lapse and lose its protections.

When selecting beneficiaries for life insurance policies, it’s essential that they are named correctly and stay up-to-date. Deliberately changing beneficiary designations posthumously can create legal and tax issues; as can failing to use death benefits according to insured’s wishes.

A will is an effective way to designate who should receive your life insurance death benefit in case of your death, while in its absence the default beneficiary could be anyone inheriting property, which might not always be what is desired. To prevent this scenario from occurring, you could designate a revocable living trust as the beneficiary of your policy – this provides added protection in case beneficiaries cannot or do not want to manage money for themselves, or become embroiled in disputes among themselves over finances.