Life Insurance Riders Protect Your Family While Cutting Premiums

Posted in Life Insurance

January 30th, 2009

Adding a rider to your life insurance is a good way to make sure that your family is covered without paying high premium costs. With the recession affecting households around the country financially, its good to cut corners wherever possible while still maintaining the highest level of protection and this is a great way to start.

What is a Rider?

Adding a rider to your life insurance basically means you are including a benefit or feature to your policy that helps you increase or limit the coverage in your policy. While making this addition will add to your monthly payment, you will most likely avoid the high premium costs you would have endured by simply going with a different plan because the underwriting involved in this process is not as extensive.

There are a number of riders that you can add to your life insurance policy to cut high premium costs. Here is a short list of common products you can take advantage of:

• Guaranteed Insurability (Renewal Provision) Adding this to your coverage allows you to account for a change in your life, such as having a child or getting married, without having to get an additional medical examination.
• Accidental Death (Double Indemnity) By adding a rider for accidental death, your beneficiary gets paid an additional amount if you as the insured die as a result of an accident.
• Waiver of Premium If you are injured or permanently disabled resulting in a loss of income prior to a specified age, your future premiums will be waived off until you are able to generate income again.
• Child Term This allows you to provide a death benefit in the event that a child dies before a specified age. If the child lives beyond that age, the plan will convert into permanent coverage, multiplying considerably without the need for additional medical exams.

By adding a rider to your life insurance policy, you get the benefit of customizing your coverage to suit your personal needs without the worry of high premium costs. So if you think you need additional features added to your policy, take time to explore the ways you can benefit from these features with your insurance company.