Life insurance: The advantages

Ensuring an estate – Life insurance can help create an estate at a time when funds may be needed most. This is a low-cost way to ensure your family’s continued financial well being.

Fast Cash – Your beneficiary, the person(s) you name to receive the insurance money, will be paid within a few days of the insurance company receiving the required information in contrast to savings and other assets that may be legally tied up for some time after death.

Living Benefits, not just for after death – Many permanent insurance policies (i.e. participating and universal life) build cash values that you can access during your lifetime. The cash value is the equity you have built up in your policy. Cash values can accumulate within your policy on a tax-advantaged basis. The growth in the cash value is generally only subject to income tax when it is withdrawn from the policy. Your policy’s cash surrender value can be used to:

• provide funds in an emergency
• finance a down payment on a home or cottage
• launch or expand a business
• act as collateral for a loan from a third-party lending institution
• supplement your retirement income provide income for long-term care or home care for you or your spouse

How you use the money is really up to you.

Other advantages

• the death benefit is not subject to income taxes
• probate costs can be avoided if you name a beneficiary other than your estate
• unlike a will, information regarding your life insurance can remain private
• in many instances, life insurance may be protected against creditors.