What are Structured Insurance Settlements?

A large number of cases are resolved through out-of-court settlements. Structured settlements are used when payment is made to a plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit. Structured settlements are used only when the settlement value is extremely high (millions of dollars) and when the payment is made in a deferred manner.

What are the Types of Insurance Claim Settlements?

Claim settlement is of two types, reimbursement and cashless settlement.

# In reimbursement claim settlement, the insured pays the bills and then files the claim, along with full documentation.

# In a cashless claim settlement, the insured informs the insurance carrier to make the payment, which could be for hospital bills, restoration charges, etc., depending upon the policy. The insurance carrier directly pays the bills of the policyholder.

When Does the Need for Claim Settlement Occur?

The need for claim settlement occurs in the event of a policyholder’s death or when the policy matures. It can be divided into the following types:

# Death claim: A beneficiary or relative of the diseased needs to intimate the insurance company.

# Maturity: In case the insured does not die till the policy matures, s/he is eligible for the basic sum assured.

What are the Benefits of Insurance Settlements?

Changes in the stock market, such as rates of interest and business cycles, the stock and bond market or economic condition as a whole do not influence life settlements. In a low risk environment, insurance settlements provide high returns on investment.

When investments are made in life settlements, there will be safety, performance and diversification within a mainstream platform, which was previously ruled by large financial institutions. These are usually win/win investments and do not involve a clear exit strategy, management fees and liquidity.

- economywatch.com -

FOR MOST PEOPLE,

The basic difference between term and whole life insurance is this: A term policy is life coverage only. On the death of the insured it pays the face amount of the policy to the named beneficiary. You can buy term for periods of one year to 30 years. Whole life insurance, on the other hand, combines a term policy with an investment component. The investment could be in bonds and money-market instruments or stocks. The policy builds cash value that you can borrow against. The three most common types of whole life insurance are traditional whole life policies, universal and variable. With both whole life and term, you can lock in the same monthly payment over the life of the policy.

Forced Savings

Whole life insurance is expensive: You’re paying not only for insurance but also for the investment portion. That extra cost might almost be worth it if these policies were a good investment vehicle. But usually they aren’t. Insurance agents like to call these policies retirement plans, emphasizing the “forced savings” inherent in forking over the premiums each month “for retirement.”

Leaving aside the fact that there are many better ways to save for retirement, these policies come with high fees and commissions, which sometimes lop off as much as three percentage points from the annual return. On top of that, there are up-front (but hidden) commissions that are typically 100% of your first year’s premium. Worse, it’s often impossible to tell what the return on the investment will be, and how much of what you pay in goes toward the insurance and how much toward the investment.

Premiums for term insurance are downright cheap for people in good health up to about age 50. After that age, premiums start to get progressively more expensive. The same holds true for whole life policies, though people who need coverage starting in their 60s and beyond may have no alternative but to buy whole life. Most companies simply won’t sell term policies to people over about age 65.

Term: Where the Value Is

To get a real sense of the value of term, let’s compare a term policy and a universal life policy. Say a 40-year-old nonsmoking male has a choice between a $250,000 Met Life universal policy with a $3,000 annual premium and a same amount of renewable term coverage with a 20-year fixed premium of $350. At the end of one year, the universal policy, assuming it paid 5.7% per year, tax-deferred, would have a cash value of exactly zero (cash value is the amount you would get back if you canceled the policy). But say he had instead invested $2,650 (the difference between $3,000 and $350) in a no-load mutual fund that averaged a total return of 10% annually. At the end of the first year, he’d have $2,841, accounting for taxes on the earnings at a 28% rate. At the end of 10 years, he would have accumulated more than $46,000 in after-tax savings in the mutual fund. Over the same period, the cash value of the policy would have climbed only to $31,819.

That’s not to say that whole life insurance is always a bad idea. Wealthy people can use whole life in their estate planning by setting up an insurance trust that will pay their estate taxes from the proceeds of the policy. And for the growing number of people in their late 40s or early 50s who are just starting families, whole life is at least worth a look.

Sizing Up a Whole Life Policy

One of the great problems with whole life is only an expert can tell if a policy you own or are considering will ever become a decent investment. James Hunt, actuary for the Consumer Federation of America, who has analyzed thousands of policies, notes that whole life policies hardly ever yield a reasonable return unless held for 20 years or more. So if you buy one be prepared to pay into it for the very long haul.

- smartmoney.com -

It’s a problem you don’t want to have: A relative dies and you have no idea which company holds his life insurance policy. Where do you begin? And if you can’t find the life insurance policy right away, can you still collect the death benefit in the future?

It’s a problem you don’t want to have: A relative dies and you have no idea which company holds his life insurance policy. Where do you begin? And if you can’t find the life insurance policy right away, can you still collect the death benefit in the future?

Hope they paid their insurance bills

If you’re a beneficiary to a life insurance policy and you have located the paperwork, first check to see if the policy was a term life insurance or a permanent life insurance policy. If it was a term life insurance policy, you’ll receive the death benefit if the insured person passed away before the term ended. If the policy expired before the date of death, you don’t have a claim.

If the person had a permanent life insurance policy, you’ll receive the money if he died while the policy was “in force,” meaning the premium payments had been made up until the death.

If it takes you a while to find the life insurance policy, you’ll receive the benefit plus interest from the date of death.

If the insured person failed to make premium payments on a term life insurance policy before his death, the policy likely “lapsed” and was not in force. However, when a permanent life insurance policy lapses, most life insurance companies do one of two things when they don’t hear from the policyholder:

Switch it to a “reduced paid up” policy — The insurance company keeps the policy in force permanently but at a lower death benefit that is determined by the cash value amount.

Switch it to an “extended term” policy — The insurance company uses any cash value that has built up in the policy to convert it to a term life insurance policy for the same death benefit. The policy term continues for as long as the cash value can cover premiums.

Life insurance companies usually use one of these as a “default” option when any whole life insurance policy lapses.If the policy lapses and an extended-term period expires before the insured dies, the policy is worthless.

But if the policy lapsed because the insured died and thus premium payments stopped, the beneficiary will collect the full death benefit, regardless of when any extended term period expired. You must send the life insurance company a copy of the death certificate for it to confirm date of death.

No matter when you find that policy, if it was in force at the time of death you can collect on it, even decades later.

What happens if no one ever reports the death?

Insurance companies routinely take steps to find out why a policyholder has stopped making payments, including sending letters to the last known address. But if a beneficiary never steps forward, the unfortunate outcome is that someone has paid for a life insurance policy that never benefits his loved ones.

In rare cases, when a beneficiary cannot be located over the course of a few years and the insurance company knows the insured person has died, the death benefit may be ultimately turned over to the state, where it becomes “unclaimed property” and waits to be found. However, life insurance companies generally have no way of knowing when an insured person has passed away.

States maintain databases listing the names and addresses of beneficiaries who are heirs of lost policyholders. In some states, the names and addresses of the beneficiaries are published annually in local newspapers. Other states have Web sites where you can enter the insured’s name and look up any death benefit that’s owed to you.

You can also get help at places that assist with unclaimed property. In addition to lost life insurance policies, these firms can help locate lost funds in bank accounts, unclaimed tax returns and lost stocks.

Tips for looking for lost life insurance policies

• Look for evidence of premium payment. Go through canceled checks or contact your deceased relative’s bank for copies of old checks. If your relative wrote checks to pay premiums, the insurer’s name should be written on checks. Also, some banks sell life insurance policies to customers who own checking or savings accounts.
• Check old credit card statements. Your relative may have paid premiums by credit card.
• Contact your relative’s employer to see if he had group life insurance.

Services to help you

The best starting point is to make sure your policy isn’t lost in the first place. That’s the sole responsibility of the policyholder. When that doesn’t happen, there are services to help beneficiaries.

FindYourPolicy.com offers a life insurance policy registry. You can store your name and insurance company names for a small monthly fee, along with beneficiary e-mail addresses. You do not have to enter your social security number, policy number or other account information. Beneficiaries can search the database for free.

If your relative bought life insurance within the last 12 years, MIB Group likely has records showing the insurers to which he applied. MIB maintains a database of life insurance application data that insurers use to reduce fraud. Records won’t show from whom he purchased a policy, but they will show any trail of applications. Record searches can be requested through MIB’s Policy Locator Service and cost $75 each.

Paul Archibald, a retired insurance professional in Virginia, runs a Lost Life Insurance Finder Expert service. Archibald will fax letters to 460 customer service centers at insurance companies, asking if your deceased relative had any life insurance policies which designated you as the beneficiary. If the insurer finds a policy, Archibald then asks the company to contact you directly to start the claim process.

Archibald acknowledges that people could send letters to life insurers themselves, but notes that compiling the list of insurers is time consuming and the postage would be costly.

“If you had the list of companies in front of you, it would take you 10 to 15 hours to print out the letters and put them in envelopes. If you mailed them yourself, the postage cost would be greater than my fee,” Archibald says. “I can do it for you, and do it faster than you ever could.”

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators offers a MissingMoney.com Web site where you can conduct a free online national search for missing money, including life insurance policies. You’ll be successful only if the policy has been deemed unclaimed and transferred to the state.

Tips for making sure your beneficiaries get your death benefit

First and foremost, give your beneficiaries your life insurance policy information! You may feel like this is an awkward conversation, but letting beneficiaries know where you keep the policy, or giving them a copy, ensures they can claim the death benefit for which you’ve been paying.

“Some customers don’t want to tell beneficiaries about the policies,” says Michael Hartmann, a life insurance agent who runs FindYourPolicy.com, a service that helps policyholders keep beneficiaries informed about the whereabouts of policies and other financial information.

Hartmann says life insurance buyers’ main reason for wanting to keep life insurance “secret” is because they don’t want to start arguments among family members over who will get what. And sometimes customers have a paranoid fear that family members will consider knocking them off if they know about a large policy.

Keep all your financial records (especially your life insurance policies) in one place. You don’t want your family to have to conduct a massive search for your policy information and other crucial records.

- www.insure.com -

Far too many U.S. children and adults are going without vaccinations because their health insurance does not fully cover the immunizations they need, according to a recent report from the Institute of Medicine.

To address the problem, the report recommends that the nation’s private and public health plans be required by law to provide insurance coverage for child and adult vaccinations, and that the government reimburse insurers for the costs associated with such vaccinations. The report also calls for the federal government to provide vouchers so that uninsured children and adults can receive vaccinations from the providers of their choice.

If enacted, the changes would transition the U.S. vaccine system from one that buys vaccine supplies to one that ensures immunizations are administered, according to the report.

“Immunizations against common, dangerous diseases convey valuable health and societal benefits, but the higher price of newly developed vaccines and the outmoded system by which they are financed create significant financial burdens on health plans, consumers, health providers and vaccine makers,” said Frank Sloan, PhD, a Duke University economics professor and chair of the IoM committee that authored the report.

The United States has had a long involvement in financing vaccines, purchasing bulk supplies of polio and measles vaccines in the 1960s. In 1993, Congress created the Vaccines for Children program, which guarantees federally purchased vaccines to more than 10 million U.S. children. Government purchases of vaccines, costing $1 billion a year, account for more than half of U.S. vaccine sales.

While U.S. childhood immunization levels are currently at an all-time high, wide variations exist among states and urban areas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which requested the IoM report. Recent vaccine shortages have further focused the spotlight on the vulnerabilities of the vaccine system.

The report, “Financing Vaccines in the 21st Century: Assuring Access and Availability,” noted that 16 percent of children who are covered by private health insurance are in plans that exclude benefits for immunizations. Because such children are not officially uninsured, they don’t qualify for government-sponsored vaccine programs and therefore may be more likely not to receive immunizations.

State policies that require students to receive vaccinations before beginning school help ensure that children get immunizations, but vaccination requirements vary widely from state to state. In 2002, a CDC survey of school nurses in the District of Columbia found that 50 percent of students needed one or more vaccinations to meet school requirements.

About 105 million adults ages 18 to 64 who have private insurance are in plans that don’t cover immunizations. Combined with the 30 million adults younger than age 65 who are estimated to be uninsured, 75 percent of adults in that age group lack immunization coverage, the report concluded.

Although older adults require fewer vaccines than children, recommendations call for them to be vaccinated against high-risk diseases such as pneumonia, influenza and hepatitis. Most of the 36,000 Americans who die of the flu annually are older adults.

The amount of immunization coverage an American receives under her or his health insurance plan often varies by their type plan type, the report found. While health maintenance organizations frequently cover immunizations as a basic benefit, preferred provider organizations often have more limited immunization benefits.

The number of Americans who are covered by preferred provider organizations has increased in recent years, representing 52 percent of employer-based enrollment, meaning that more people may face barriers to immunization.

The high price of new vaccines also presents a roadblock to expanding immunization coverage, the report found. About 20 doses of vaccines targeting 11 diseases are recommended for U.S. children, costing the public sector about $400 and the private sector about $600.

When newer, more expensive vaccines such as pneumococcal conjugate — which provides protection against many serious infections — were added to the recommended list of child vaccines in recent years, expenditures for the Vaccines for Children program jumped, increasing from $500 million in 2000 to $1 billion in 2002. As new vaccines are developed, licensed and produced, continued cost increases will occur, the committee predicted.

While vaccines provide a savings in health care costs in the long run by preventing disease, health agencies have to shoulder the short-term costs of buying and delivering vaccines, the report noted.

- www.medscape.com -

Originally, the name AARP was an abbreviation for the American Association of Retired Persons. Recently the name was shortened and actually changed to only the abbreviation. The AARP is an advocacy group that actively works within society and promotes the interests of senior citizens and helps to offer them specific products. One product is life insurance for AARP members only.

The Facts

1. The life insurance that AARP offers its members is actually underwritten by the New York Life Insurance company. This is because the AARP does not qualify as an insurance company and would not legally be allowed to underwrite life insurance policies for its members. Even so, the influence of the AARP is massive and the group has been able to induce New York Life to offer great policies to its members due to the sheer volume of sales.

Type

2. The AARP and New York Life offer several different types of life insurance policies to AARP members. There are both terms life insurance policies and permanent life insurance policies. Term policies cover the insured individual for a certain time period and then expire whereas permanent policies offer lifetime coverage. There are also many different policy dollar amounts to choose from depending on one’s situation.

Misconceptions

3. Many people believe incorrectly that in order to be a member of the AARP and be eligible for their life insurance policy, one must be retired. Another common misconception is that one must be older than 62 or 65 years old to qualify. Neither of these ideas are true. All one needs to become an AARP member is residency in the US and to be over 50 years. All AARP members are eligible for the benefits of AARP life insurance.

Benefits

4. The benefits to be reaped by holding AARP life insurance are numerous. Life insurance helps to insulate one’s family members from the inevitable financial strain that comes with the death of a loved one. Life insurance also helps to make certain that the family or spouse of the insured individual will have a nest egg to fall back upon if the deceased individual was the primary earner in the family. All of these are good reasons why one might consider purchasing AARP life insurance.

Geography

5. AARP life insurance is available only to residents of the US. This is because AARP membership requires residency within the US Seniors in other areas have the option to purchase life insurance, and may even be eligible to purchase other life insurance policies from New York Life, but they are not eligible for AARP life insurance.

- www.ehow.com -

Being overweight is not just a health concern. It affects the insurance as well. Overweight causes problems for the internal organs, besides damaging them in the long run. Overweight people do not look good and many even look ugly. They also have to bear the taunts of colleagues, friends and acquaintances. When you approach an insurance company to buy insurance, you have to record all the details. You have to record your age, your weight, your BMI and other things before you sign the contract with the insurance company. They go into the minutest details. Being overweight is a health hazard. It puts the body out of it optimum working order. It is quite possible that your weight may result in your developing diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, diseases of the heart and so on and so forth.

Official statistics show that a large majority of US people tend to be obese. There is a difference between overweight and obese and you will have to find out the difference. Being clinically obese will lessen your chances of getting a proper insurance policy. There was a time when fat babies were liked by all and parents competed with each other to have fat and fatter babies. But then these babies become fat adults and then the trouble begins. Physically US people are bigger and fatter. This no longer brings smiles to people’s faces. It creates problems. It can have a negative impact on general health. It is mainly for this reason that life insurance providers demand a physical assessment so that before providing the policy they can fully assess your starting point and then calculate your potential path checking to see how your present state could affect your future. Of course being overweight does not stop anyone from getting an insurance cover but it certainly affects the cost of the premiums.

There may be certain factors linked with being overweight which will exclude you from certain levels of cover as compared to an active lifestyle that caters to those who are serious about their bodies, health and their looks. Some of the risk factors, like getting diabetes, or heart problems if you are overweight, are the reasons why the assessments are carried out. The insurance companies would like to assess your overall level of risk. An overweight person has more risk factors than a normal one. Other factors that are taken into consideration when you buy a policy is whether you are a smoker, a heavy drinker, or regularly participate in high risk activities like speed racing or dangerous sports.

When they check your BMI (Body Mass Index) they will class you. Having a BMI of 25 or more will put you into an overweight class and will most certainly cost you when it comes to the proceeds of the policy being offered to you. Overweight does not necessarily mean that you are likely to get a heart attack soon but it puts you into a high risk category. Illnesses like diabetes need long term care.

Sometimes if you are too overweight you may be refused insurance altogether.

- insurance1.com -

Remember it is not possible to substitute special life insurance dedicated to the seniors with any other investment or other type of insurance. This is because a life insurance product specially meant for seniors will take care of many different types of expenses such as funeral costs and any payment towards debts that a person may have accumulated, among others. A senior’s life insurance policy therefore offers a way to cover all such costs without putting any undue financial burden on their survivors.

Yet another advantage that you can get with a seniors life insurance policy is that you can secure a loan using it. Insurance companies on their part are coming out with many different insurance products specifically targeted at this segment of the population, realizing all their needs.

The internet is a good place to find special life insurance dedicated to the seniors quotes. You no longer need to call up and talk to various insurers in order to get insurance quotes. Getting insurance quotes is now only a few clicks away, thanks to the advent of the internet. You can always compare the various products meant for seniors available in the market and then make a decision. The internet is perhaps the best place to search for cheap special life insurance coverage dedicated to the seniors.

You can also talk to your insurance agent, who may be able to offer you valuable tips on senior’s life insurance products. They could for instance guide you on different aspects as the term of the insurance, the coverage, the benefits and the premium that you need to pay towards obtaining senior’s life insurance. One of the most important benefits that come along with a senior’s life insurance policy is that you need to pay a fixed premium, which would not increase. Similarly another important benefit that is guaranteed with a senior’s life insurance policy is death benefit. A senior citizen can also sell his or her senior’s life insurance policy and get some cash in turn too. Your insurance agent can give you valuable insights into all these aspects of a senior’s life insurance policy.

You should take your time and do a bit of research when shopping for senior’s life insurance. The internet, with a number of websites dedicated to the topic, in fact is be the best way to not only to get to know about the different insurance products for senior citizens but also to find cheap special life insurance coverage dedicated to the seniors.

- insurance1.com -