Life insurance is an agreement between a person needing insurance and the insuring company, where the company selling the insurance accepts to pay money upon the occasion of the insured individual's or individuals' dying or other circumstance, such as terminal sickness or critical disease. In return, the policy purchaser approves to pay a stipulated expense that is called a premium, at arranged intervals or in one large amount. In some countries bills and dying costs plus catering for after funeral expenses should be included in the insurance policy Premium. In the us, the routine form simply specifies a lump sum of money to be paid out on the insured's passing away.
As with most assurance documents, life insurance assurance is a contract between the insurer and the policy owner whereby a benefit is paid out to the designated beneficiaries if an policy owner event occurs which is covered by the insurance policy. To be a life insurance policy the policy owner occurrence has to be based upon the lives of the people aforementioned in the policy.
Insured circumstances that are sometimes covered include:
Terminal disease
Life documents are legal deals and the terms of the deal explain the limitations of the policy owner events. Specific exclusions are often inscribed into the document to limit the liability of the insurance company; i.e., insurance claims relating to suicide, fraud, war, riot and civil commotion.
Life-based contracts are mostly two types:
Protection policies - created to yield a benefit in the circumstance of specified happening, most usually a lump sum of money payment. A common form of this type of policy is term life assurance.
Investment policies - where the main objective is to contribute to the growth of capital by single premiums. Common forms (in the US anyway) are whole life, universal life and variable life policies.
