It’s the dilemma that so many of us are experiencing right now; you might already have a life insurance policy or another form of protection insurance such as income protection or critical illness cover, and during a cost-of-living crisis, it’s something you will probably be very thankful to have.
But if you’re struggling to keep on top of your current premiums, what options do you have for lowering your expenditure? Is it just a case of struggling along with your existing policy, or cancelling it altogether?
Tip #1: take another look at your needs from protection insurance
If, like a lot of people recently, you have seen your budget gradually shrink as food and energy costs have climbed, and this is impacting on your ability to keep on paying your premiums on your current protection insurance plan, it could be worth asking yourself whether your needs have changed.
Indeed, this is something that protection insurance policyholders should be doing from time to time anyway,to ensure they aren’t wasting money on coverage they don’t need. So, you might as well take the chance now to look again at how well-matched your policies are to your real-world requirements.
Maybe you took out your income protection or life insurance policy at a time when you had a mortgage still to be paid off, and that loan has now been entirely repaid? Or perhaps you had dependents living with you, who have now grown up and moved out of your home?
These are factors that could impact on the amount of protection you really require, so you could save yourself a decent chunk of money by modifying your existing policy to cover you for less.
Tip #2: see whether you can get a cheaper policy for the same amount of cover
Now, this advice might seem to be venturing into fantasy land. After all, protection insurance products such as life insurance often become more expensive over time for the same amount of cover, rather than less expensive, due to factors like the policyholder’s advancing age and any health conditions they may have developed since their policy started.
But that’s not automatically the case, and there are things you can do to reduce how much you pay for an income protection, critical illness, or life insurance policy, without sacrificing the level of protection you benefit from.
There might, for example, be healthy lifestyle changes that you can make to help make you look like less of a risk to an insurer - think such things as quitting smoking, shedding excess weight, and reducing alcohol intake. If you are able to prove that you have spent a year or more living a healthier lifestyle, your existing insurer might be prepared to lower your premiums.
Then, there is simply the option of seeing whether there are any alternative insurers out there that would be willing to offer you a more competitively priced policy than you presently have, without the need for you to change your level of protection.
Tip #3: give one of our UK expert advisers a call!
Did you know that you can have your existing policies reviewed by a specialist adviser, who might be able to find solutions such as an alternative product that would make sense for your practical needs and your pocket? Give our no-obligation advice and quotation line a call for free now, on 01604 436919, to see what could be possible.
Generally speaking, it is better to have at least some protection rather than none at all, so it is a good idea to carefully consider your options, instead of cancelling your existing policy and going without protection. Here at QuoteLifeCover, we are determined to help - and have a track record of doing exactly that for a wide range of protection insurance policyholders up and down the UK.
