Life Insurance is a Fully Funded Contractual Will

Most of us know just how valuable Life Insurance can be, particularly for protecting your dependents against the financial hardship caused by the unexpected death of the main family breadwinner.
When looking for plans to provide the required cover, most people tend to focus solely on the monthly cost which may not provide a true indication of the best value over the required term.
Even when wills, work, they proceed through probate, incurring costs and opening your affairs to the scrutiny of the public. When wills don't work, your desires can be contested, at great cost, and can even be declared invalid. Life insurance 'wills' have none of these problems and even fully fund your estate for the determined value at the precise time it is needed.
Think about this: People surrender other assets and put proceeds into life insurance, which is fully funded contractual will. Few, if any, surrender life insurance to invest in stocks, bonds or real estate.
Perhaps the best way to obtain maximum value is to select the right type of plan to match the need. For example most people automatically select lump sum cover when setting up a life insurance policy for family protection. This type of plan is fine if you need to provide lump sums to pay off debts such as mortgages and loans etc. Family protection however is more about providing an income to replace that lost as a result of the death of the life assured. Having a lump sum is fine but where do you invest the lump sum to generate the required income? Will the income received be subject to tax and will the lump sum be sufficient to generate the required income for the required term?
For example term life insurance plans usually offer two types of premium, guaranteed and reviewable. As the name implies guaranteed premiums are just that. The premium is fixed at outset and cannot subsequently be changed by the insurer in the light of poor claims experiences. Reviewable premiums however are subject to a periodic review and therefore the premiums could be increased by the insurer if this class of insurance was subject to more claims than anticipated. Although guaranteed premium plans tend to cost slightly more initially than reviewable plans they are worth considering particularly for terms in excess of 10 years.