Why is Life Insurance Important in India?
Life insurance is important in India as it provides coverage to the policyholder and the required peace of mind, knowing their family will be financially secure in their absence. These plans pay the nominee of the policy with the death benefit in case of the policyholder’s death during the policy term, and on survival, payout the maturity amount to the policyholder.
Life insurance covers individuals against a variety of eventualities, including natural death, accidental death, and suicidal death (after completion of 12 months). However, there are some limitations and exclusions on the types of deaths covered by life insurance.
What is not covered under Life Insurance in India?
Let us take a look at the types of death not covered under term insurance:
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Death due to criminal activity
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Death due to consumption of alcohol, drugs, or smoking habits
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Death due to a pre-existing medical condition
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Death due to STDs like HIV
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Death due to Homicide
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Death due to natural disasters or calamities
How can I Enhance my Life Insurance Sum Assured?
You can enhance your life insurance cover amount through the following ways:
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Adding Riders to the base plan
With life insurance riders, you can enhance the base cover of your plan at nominal premiums. You can go through the list of available riders in each plan and select the ones you want to add to the base plan. You can easily pay the premiums along with the base premiums.
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Opting for Life Stage Benefits
You can check if your life insurance plan offers any life-stage benefits. With this, you can increase your sum assured at milestone stages like marriage, childbirth, or home loans. Most insurers allow you to increase the sum assured by 50% on marriage and 25% on childbirth.
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Selecting Voluntary Top-ups
Some insurers offer the option of increasing the sum assured with voluntary top-ups. This way, in case you have an additional amount you want to secure for your future or family, you can add it to your plan without increasing the premiums.
Why Insurers do not Cover Death due to Natural Disasters?
Most insurers do not provide financial aid in case of death due to natural disasters because of the large number of deaths. Several calamities like earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, storms, etc. are not covered by life insurance. In case of a calamity or natural disaster, a large number of people may die, which in turn could increase the company’s claims registered rates. This would mean the company would have to settle most of the claims, and thus, to reduce the risk of paying a large number of claims, insurers do not provide cover against death due to natural disasters.