The term Life Insurance refers to an agreement between an insurance provider and the policy holder whereby the policy holder pays a certain amount of money at regular intervals and the insurance provider agrees to pay out an agreed sum of money to the policy holders dependents (usually family) upon the death of the policy holder.

In some countries it is normal to have funeral expenses covered in a insurance policy, but in the UK, companies tend to simply pay out a lump sum to the beneficiaries of the insured upon his/her demise.

A life insurance policy will contain contract terms and these terms will include death circumstances for which the insured will not be covered, and the ones for which they will be. Death circumstances that will generally not be covered by life insurance are suicide, riot or war.

There are two main types of life contracts; protection policies and investment policies. Protection policies will be beneficial to pre-specified parties (usually in the form of a lump sum) in the event of a scenario mentioned in the contract. Investment policies use regular premiums (payments) in order for capital to grow, some common forms are universal life, whole life and variable life policies.

The term beneficiary refers to the person who will receive the lump sum upon the death of the insured person. Usually the beneficiary can be changed at any time unless an irrevocable beneficiary is appointed. In this case, the beneficiary must grant their permission regarding any changes relating to the beneficiary.

Although the policy holder and the insured are usually the same person, they are not always. For example, if a man takes out life insurance on his own life, then he is the policy holder and the insured, and this is usually how it works. However, if his wife takes out the policy on his life, then she is the policy holder and he is the insured.

Insurance companies do however want to put restraints on who can take out policies for someone else’s life. This is because if anyone can take out a policy for anyone else’s life, then there is a good chance that people will start taking out policies for people who they know will die soon or worse still, people who they intend to kill. So insurance companies sought to limit the people who can take out insurance policies on someone else’s life to only those who will suffer a genuine loss if the insured were to die, i.e. family members or those who can prove that they are close friends.

As is the case with most general insurance policies, life insurance is a contract between the insurer and the insured where a payment is made to pre-designated parties upon the occurrence of an event covered in the insurance policy, in the case of life insurance, this is usually death.