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Four Important Things to Look For in a Term Life Policy

What’s one of the biggest life insurance mistakes consumers make? Making a purchasing decision based solely on price!

As people age, even common habits and health problems — such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes or weight gain (64 percent of Americans over the age of 20 are overweight)1 — can make term insurance prohibitively expensive or inaccessible.

The good news is that purchasing a term life policy doesn’t close the door on permanent insurance. All of Symetra’s term life policies are fully convertible to permanent insurance. This option may be appealing if permanent insurance isn’t in your budget right now, but you still want to leave the door open to covering your permanent financial needs and protecting future insurability. If you’re looking for that kind of peace of mind, here are four important things to look for in your term life policy:

  1. Is the policy fully convertible to permanent insurance? Not all carriers will allow you to convert a term life policy to permanent insurance without evidence of insurability. All of Symetra’s term policies are fully convertible to permanent insurance — without additional medical underwriting.
  2. Can the policy be converted to age 75? Many insurance carriers limit the number of years you can convert to a permanent policy without evidence of insurability. All of Symetra’s term policies are fully convertible to age 75.
  3. Can the policy be converted to any of the company’s permanent policies with no limitations? Even among carriers that allow conversions, some limit the permanent insurance products you can convert to. Symetra’s term life policies are convertible to any permanent policy of your choice with no limitations.
  4. Can I earn a conversion credit? When you convert a term life policy issued in or after 2002, you may be eligible for a conversion credit in the form of a premium deposit into your new non-variable permanent policy.

1 National Center for Health Statistics, “Overweight Prevalence (Data are for U.S. for 1999-2002),” accessed from “Fast Stats A to Z,” online: Dec. 17, 2004.