Portability brings peace of mind
Keep your options open with an international life insurance policy
George* was a young, up-and-coming financial adviser who moved to Malaysia from the UK to work for an international advisory firm. Throughout his career, he spoke to countless clients about the risks of delaying taking out a life insurance policy.
In an ironic twist of fate, George was involved in a fatal accident while he was in Malaysia. He didn’t have an international life insurance policy in place for himself, and although he didn’t have a partner or children to support, he was survived by his elderly mother in the UK who desperately wanted to bury him on home ground.
With no policy in place to cover him outside of his country of residence, however, there were no funds available for the repatriation of his body, and his grieving mother had to resort to start a ‘Go Fund Me’ account to raise the money she needed to bring him home for a local funeral.
George’s story is tragic, but it’s unfortunately not uncommon.
The importance of life insurance
None of us want to think about our days being numbered, but there is peace of mind to be found in putting the necessary protection in place to ensure that those you leave behind will be financially stable in your absence.
Yet so many of us delay taking out insurance and take the risk that one day we will have waited until it’s too late.
Take out a policy sooner rather later
Delaying taking out a life insurance policy sooner rather than later can also have significant financial implications. The younger you are when you take out a policy, the lower the likelihood of health risks and therefore the lower your premium. Yet according to a Forbes Advisor survey, “less than half of respondents knew that health history and age are considered when determining a life insurance quote”.
“Although we have seen people focus more on planning for the future since the pandemic, life insurance is unfortunately usually the last kind of insurance that individuals think about, even though when it is primarily designed to protect the people that matter most (your family),” explains Jamie Fitzsimmons, Unisure’s Commercial Head for Asia and Individual Life.
“The cost of life insurance only goes up the older you get, and the older an individual gets, the more likely their personal circumstances are to change. It can cost a 40-year-old individual 109% more in life insurance premiums than it would a 30-year-old. Should that individual wait until they’re 50 years old, their premiums would be 155% more expensive than if they’d taken out cover at age 40. That’s why best practice advice is to take out a policy as young as possible, even if it’s for a smaller amount; you can always increase the sum assured as your circumstances and needs change, but at least you can rest assured that your cover is already in place.”
DID YOU KNOW?
The importance of international life insurance
As George’s story, shows, life insurance is an important level of protection for all phases of our lives, even when we’re single. And international life insurance, specifically, is incredibly important for expats, frequent travellers, digital nomads, and foreign nationals living and working outside of their country of residence.
We asked Jamie to weigh in on what he considers to be four of the biggest benefits of securing an international life insurance policy:
- Worldwide portability. Local policies very often won’t cover you outside of your country of residence, whereas an international provider like Unisure covers policyholders in over 120 countries around the world.
- Stable global currencies. This means that your beneficiaries’ payouts won’t be as susceptible to local currency fluctuations as an international policy in USD, for example.
- Guaranteed cover. Depending on the provider, a client’s cover will likely be guaranteed, no matter where they move to in the future. Unisure’s individual life insurance policies guarantee cover for the entire policy term. This means that once a client’s policy has started, it does not matter which changes they make to their country of residence, lifestyle, occupation, or travel obligations; cover will remain unaffected and is guaranteed for the duration of the policy term.
- Personalised according to your needs. Our international individual life insurance policies are personalised and sold through brokers, who are best placed to advise clients on how much cover they need, depending on their unique circumstances. Group life policies typically cover 3 to 5 times an employee’s annual salary, whereas the recommended cover level for family protection is around 10 to 20 times one’s annual income (depending on the size of the family etc.).
To learn more about The Unisure Group’s individual life insurance solutions, visit https://www.unisuregroup.com/individual-life/ or email admin.life@unisuregroup.com.
*Name changed to protect the individual’s privacy.
