Life insurance/mortage protection

Hi all, Am bit clueless so any advice will be welcome

My husband has mortgage in his name, and had a life policy with serious illness and hosp cover.
Now I'm wondering should we go for a dual life policy? Would it be more cost effective?
We have 2 dependents so we're going for life insurance, rather than mortgage protection(hope I've got that right) and how much over the actual mortgage should we be thinking of? 50,000 or 100,000? other?

Think serious illness cover would also be good idea, if the worst hapens? How much? BTW I'm 26 and hubby is 33. Don't think we really need hosp cover?

I'm arranging to meet Finanial advisor, but would like to know what I'm delaing with first, and are online companies just as good (e.g. 123.ie, LAbrokers, etc)
Thanks in advance

There are plenty of good financial advisors around (including on this site).

There are links to cheap deals with some of them offering Special Offers



When deciding what cover to take out or accept always ask yourself:

How would the death or serious Illness of a family member effect my income.

Some people dont think of the fact that they might want time off work or to retire if something awful did happen. What if you need to look after your loved one if they got seriously Ill.

Life Assurance and Illness cover are products that we should all pray we never need to use, but if they have to be claimed on, they are a godsend. Most people dont like to think of the possibilities or probobilities that will eventually befall us all. Some could even think I am scaremongering, but if one truely sits down and asks oneself the above question, I think the conclusion will be obvious.

The cost of the insurance will be affected by your smoker status and any health issues that may arise out of a medical (if required).

Dual insurance means the policy pays out twice. Joint means that once there is one claim the cover is finished.

Mortgage protection is decreasing Term assurance. They are both Life Assurance.

Have you thought about having a seperate mortgage protection policy just to cover the mortgage (either with or without serious illness), and then take out 2 seperate "pension term assurance" policies.

The advantage of pension term assurance is that you can claim back either 20% or 41% (depending on your tax rates) of the cost of the policies. The main disadvantage is that these policies cannot be used as security over any loans.

Best to get independent advice from an Authorised Advisor, who can do a full needs analysis, and fact find. They can then recommend the best route for you to take.

Best of luck

You seem to have already made your mind up on Life Assurance cover from your post. There are 2 types, Joint and Dual. I would always recommend Dual cover as the difference in price is quite small most of the time and for the couple of extra euro you get a much superior product (2 payouts instead of 1 should anything happen to you both).

In regard to illness cover, it is quite expensive. Many people that decide to take out serious illness cover do so for 50% of their life cover amount purely because this type of insurance is so expensive.

In my experience most people dont go for hospital cover now as generally hospitals tend to try to get you out the door as quickly as possible due to lack of beds. If you were looking for additional cover, accident cover might be a better alternative but again it depends on how much you are budgeting to spend on cover.

In regard to online brokers, they provide much the same service as a normal broker except that they generally provide discounts for doing business online that you wont get if you have a sit down with a broker and complete a full needs analysis with them. If you know what you want and dont mind ringing an online broker to clarify any last queries you have then you will be better shopping around online as you will get better value.