One of the most important aspects of all investments is getting the best life insurance plan. The importance of a life insurance plan is to make small sums of investments during the course of your life, so as to ensuring a accumulated sum for your family and dependants, after your death. Not making the right investment could be detrimental for your well being and the well being of your family and dependants after your death.

Before you make the decision of investing in an insurance policy, follow the following tips to make the right decision.

Tip 1: Get yourself the right Broker

We may be experts in something or the other but that does not mean we know all about life insurance investments. A good, experienced broker is worth a million dollars. They are normally in agreement with all the large insurance companies, so you have access to many different products through a single channel. Also, brokers tend to be vigilant about the guidance they provide, because they can be taken to task under South African Law if they aren't.

Check their credentials before you believe them because reputable brokers are normally registered with one or more of the professional insurance associations in our country.

Tip 2: Choose the right insurance plan

Not all policies are beneficial for everyone. Choose the right policy to suit your need.

To give you an idea: Should you require life cover until your death, you may want to opt for whole life cover instead of term life insurance. If you want to add a savings portion together with some other benefits on top of your life cover, a universal life type of product could turn out to be the better option for you.

Spending some time with your broker reflecting on exactly what you need and considering the various options available, will be fruitful.

Tip 3: Make the right amount of investment

The right amount of cover is determined by the amount of income you want your survivors to receive after your death, the cost of winding up your estate, your assets and liabilities, and the value of other life insurance that you may already have in place. Buying too much or too little would be needless.

Your broker can chalk out a plan to help you establish exactly how much additional cover is required to meet your demands.

Tip 4: Buy what you can afford

The premium you pay depends on the amount of cover you select and several risk factors such as age at the time of insurance, health and medical history (including family history), tobacco use, etc. If the premium is too high, consider deleting some of the benefits you may have added to the policy, such as trauma or dread disease, before cutting back on the amount of cover you have selected.

It is very important that you can comfortably afford to pay the premium. If not, the policy will eventually lapse, leaving you and your family at a loss.

Tip 5: Look around

Not all companies are equally cost effective on all policy types. Some companies specialise in term life policies, others in whole life policies; while others still have the ability to offer universal policies at competitive rates than the others.

If you use a broker, he or she will obtain quotes from the various insurers and help you to compare these on a feature-by-feature basis. Brokers are experienced and have clear knowledge of the credibility of the insurance companies. When you buy insurance, the least that you expect is that the company to write the cheque when you need it.

Tip 6: Benefits over discrete policies

If you are thinking about getting insurance for dread disease, functional impairment, etc., you could save money by adding these benefits to the life insurance policy you are about to buy instead of buying discrete policies for each type of cover.

Tip 7: The rider is a good choice

A rider affords you the opportunity to periodically increase your life cover by as much as 20% without having to prove your health. If you don't select a rider, you will need to go through a medical examination and blood tests each time you want to increase your insured amount. If your health happened to have deteriorated since your previous medical examination, you could end up paying a higher rate for the cover than would have been the case had you opted for a rider.

Get to understand your policy

Once you have purchased your life insurance policy, do remember to review and understand its provisions. South African law gives you a 30-day cooling-off period. Within this period, you have the right to cancel the policy without incurring any penalties at all.