5 Arguments against Buying Your Life Insurance Policy on the Internet
November 6th, 2009
With the title above, it may look like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot as a life insurance brokerage that specializes in the online marketing of life and health insurance. We have thousands of people visit our Internet page daily, and many visitors often approach us about whether they can purchase an insurance policy directly through our website. We have thought about this idea a lot, and decided that it would mean providing our clients with insufficient service, if we offered buying life insurance online.
We have found the following few reasons why it’s not such a good idea to purchase a life insurance policy online:
1. Life insurance, when bought directly via a website, is looked at on a singular level and not as part of an overall financial plan. When reviewing life insurance, careful planning should be put into determining why the insurance is needed, how much is needed 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 agent in person or at least over the phone.
2. The websites where you can directly purchase a life insurance policy offer only a limited product choice. Most websites selling life insurance are limited to a few companies and in some cases, just one carrier with a few of their products.
3. There are usually some details of the insurance policy 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 products just belong to things that are too complicated to be sold online. There are too many characteristics in some products (for example Universal Life or Whole Life insurance) that cannot be disclosed when the policy is sold directly online. BMO’s Universal Life policy offers more than 400 investment options. The whole plan is just too complex to be sold via the Internet.
5. If you need to get in touch with someone from the insurance company, it would be most probably with a call centre and not a broker.
Do not get us wrong, we are not saying that the Internet is not a great resource when purchasing a life insurance. You can find out all kinds of great information concerning life insurance on the Internet. For instance tools such as our Instant Quote Calculator or Needs Analysis Calculator can be a great help. But it is one thing to look for information and another one to actually purchase an insurance.
Posted in Insurance