Deciding to buy life insurance is a hard decision.   It seems to get harder after you’ve made your decision to buy the policy.

You have to decide on how much coverage to buy.    Then you have to decide which type of policy to buy, pure insurance or permanent insurance.   Then you have to shop it and get several life insurance quotes.   And then when you finally get your life insurance quotes the life insurance companies always seem overly cautious.    The insurance companies seem to take forever to approve you.  Why is that, and are you covered during the approval process?

Why does insurance underwriting take so long?

You need approval:

• Getting approved can take a while because life insurance companies want to be sure.
• Insurance companies want to make sure you are buying a life insurance policy that will fit your individual financial needs.
• Insurance companies know that with life insurance, one size does not fit all.
• Life insurance companies want to fulfill their responsibilities to the insured by matching the financial needs with the proper life insurance policy as closely as possible.
• Insurance underwriting requires a lot of detailed information on a proposed insured so that it covers all financial needs as closely as possible.
• The detailed questions also help protect the life insurance company from insuring a bad risk.
• Insurance approval takes awhile because the insurance company wants to make sure you are a suitable risk.

Life insurance underwriting:

• The only way for an insurance company to get to know you and determine if you are a suitable risk is through the application.

• Make sure your life insurance agent explains the questions on the application so that you really understand them.
• Underwriters look at risk.
• Life insurance underwriters are responsible for risk.
• Insurance underwriters only want to insure suitable risks.
• Underwriters are responsible for making sure the risk they are insuring is in line with the premium charged for that risk.
• If your application indicates in any way that you could be a high risk, the underwriter will have to take extra time to analyze your application more closely.
• If you answer the medical questions on a life insurance application wrong, the underwriter could deny your application or you could be charged a higher premium.
• There are no “do-overs” on a life insurance application; so never lie on an application and make sure you completely understand the question before answering it.
• If a question is left unanswered or is answered too vaguely on life insurance quotes and applications, insurance underwriting gets jittery.
• When insurance underwriters get jittery, they deny or bump up the premium to cover for a risk that may or may not be there.
• Whenever you are in doubt about how to answer a question on a life insurance application or life insurance quote, have your life insurance agent guide you.

• Sometimes the life insurance quotes and applications are not detailed enough.
• When there isn’t enough detail the insurance underwriting department will have to contact your physicians for additional clarity.
• Do not be alarmed by this;  it’s just standard insurance underwriting procedures.

Are you covered during underwriting?

• You always want to ask your life insurance agent if you are covered during the underwriting process.
• Some life insurance companies do cover you, some do not; so you have to ask.
• You want to know if the policy is in effect while the application is being processed through underwriting.
• In other words, if something were to happen to you before the policy is issued, will your beneficiaries be able to collect on that life insurance policy.