Other Types of Insurance

Life Insurance
Life insurance is handled differently to car and home insurance as it is handled by specialist life insurance companies. This is due to the fact that a life insurance policy runs for a long term, compared to the usual yearly policies.

There are two types of life insurance; term and whole. Term life insurance requires fixed, regular payments and then will pay the agreed benefit if the person who has taken out the policy dies during the policy term.

Whole life insurance will also require fixed, regular payments and will also pay out the death benefit if the policy is still valid, but will allow the policy holder to claim some of the surrender value after the first initial years of the payments have been made.

Health/Critical Illness Insurance
Health insurance is essential in the USA, since unlike the UK they do not have a National Health Service. Americans will either have the premiums for their policy deducted from their salary by their employer, have the insurance paid for in full by their employer or if they are out of work, pay into a scheme through an insurance company. In the UK it is increasingly popular to hold private medical insurance so that you are able to be seen immediately when required by private doctors, rather than relying on the National Health Service.

Critical Illness insurance is the next step for health insurance as like life insurance, it covers the policy holder against the unforeseen circumstances involved with having a critical illness. The policy will state what illnesses are covered and what level of pay out can be expected. Critical illness insurance will require a fixed, regular payment and is generally a long term policy.

Travel Insurance
The number of people travelling abroad is rapidly increasing and more and more people are protecting themselves against events beyond their control or unexpected accidents. Travel insurance can be taken out at different levels and policies will cover medical expenses abroad, the cost of replacing damaged personal items, or even to compensate for delayed flights.

Pet Insurance
People's pets are very important to their owners, but more importantly the medical expenses for treating sick or injured animals is constantly increasing. Therefore it is becoming more popular to take out an insurance policy to protect pets from accidents and illness.