Five Whys against Getting Your Life Insurance Policy Online

You might think that as a life insurance brokerage with a specialization in the Internet marketing of life and health insurance, we probably shouldn’t publish articles with titles like this one. Our website has thousands of visitors every day, a lot of of them contacting us with enquiries about possibilities of buying an insurance policy directly online. While we have tinkered with and marinated on this idea, we feel buying life insurance online is a disservice to our clients.
We have gathered the following few reasons why it’s not such a good idea to purchase a life insurance policy online:

1. Life insurance policies should be always regarded as a part of an overall financial plan, which is not possible to do when you purchase it directly via a website as a single product. When considering life insurance, careful planning should be put into consideration why the insurance is needed, how much is necessary and what’s the best type of life insurance for a specific person. All this is very difficult to be done, if you don’t speak to an insurance broker in person or at least over the phone.

2. Life insurance purchased directly from a website is limited in its product selection. In most cases, the online selection of life insurance products is limited to just a few carriers and sometimes even just one company with a few of their products.

3. There are usually some characteristics of the insurance product that may not be fully explained to you when you purchase the insurance online. When you purchase your life insurance online, you might be surprised later about some nuances – for instance some ten-year term policies are not renewable or convertible, or may carry a higher than usual renewable premium, and so on.

4. Many insurance policies are just too complicated to be sold online. In case of Universal Life and Whole Life insurance, there are too many characteristics that cannot be explained when offered directly online. For instance BMO’s Universal Life policy offers more than 400 investment options. The plan is too complex to be sold online.

5. Any further contact with the carrier (if you need it) is likely to be with a call centre operator and not an insurance advisor.

Just to be understood correctly – of course the Internet is a useful source of information when purchasing life insurance. Some websites can give you a lot of useful information concerning life insurance. Our Instant Quote Calculator or Needs Analysis Calculator are just a few examples of great tools when looking for a life insurance policy. But finding information is really different to purchasing.

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