One good place to start when looking for any form of financial service is to establish what you need the service for, as well as looking for good value and level of service from your broker. Looking for life insurance can be simplified even further. How much life insurance do you need and for what length of time? Answer these two questions first and you can then go about searching for the right price and policy.

So what coverage is required? To offer up an example, insuring a 150,000 mortgage could mean taking out a 150,000 insurance policy. Your dependents will then be responsible for covering the debt in the event of your death.

If family protection is the kind of insurance you need then working out the cover required is slightly more complicated. You need an insurance policy just to protect your family, therefore you need to establish how much worse off your family would be on your death.

The best way to assess this is to take into account your annual income. Lets say that you annual income is 30,000. In the event of your death your family would therefore be 30,000 worse off. So what would be required would be 30,000 cover per annum.

There are two different approaches to this. The first is called family income benefit. The way this life insurance scheme works is that it covers a certain amount of money per year over a specified amount of time. So basically, 30,000 coverage over 30 years would mean that the policy would pay out 30,000 each year over the period of 30 years.

Indexation can also be included in this type of policy. Essentially, the way indexation works is to increase the return on your policy each year in accordance with the average earnings index. In other words, your family will benefit from what your pay rise would have been had you still been alive.

The alternative way is to take out a lump sum life insurance plan. The problem with doing this is you need to work out how much of a lump sum you need in order to generate 25,000 per annum. This can be inherently difficult as you don't really know how the money is going to be invested and as such you will have no idea how much of a return anyone is going to make and therefore how long it will last if 25,000 is taken from it every year. That said it is a rule of thumb to go for a minimum of 10 times required benefit, if you factor this then 25,000 per annum needs a lump sum benefit of 250,000.

Therefore if a set payout per annum is a big requirement you should definitely consider family income benefit. It is created to payout the same every year and takes a pro rata pay rise into account. It removes the fear of investing when you know that is your family's future that is at stake. You can rest easy with the peace of mind that your loved ones are adequately protected.

Therefore, to conclude, you need to estimate the amount of money your family would require each year and how many years they would require that amount for. The easiest way to make the process less daunting is to search through the appropriate internet websites were all the information is readily available. And these sites will contain contact numbers for advisers if there is anything that you are still unsure of.