Life insurance

If anyone would suffer financially if you died, either because of the income that would be lost or because of the extra money that would be needed to pay for the free services you provide – childcare, for example – you need life insurance.
If no one is financially dependent on you, life insurance is unnecessary.

The main reason for buying life insurance is to provide financial protection for your dependants in the event of your death.
It may be that you already have some life insurance through your job, or that some is linked to your mortgage in the form of a mortgage protection policy or as part of an endowment mortgage.
In this case, whether you need to buy more life insurance depends on how much replacement income your dependants would need, and whether they would need a lump sum to pay for large additional expenses as a result of your death – such as having to replace a company car or pay an inheritance tax bill.

There are different types of life insurance or life assurance as it is properly known.
These include whole of life policies, term life policies and mortgage endowment insurance policies.
This site has explanations of each. Life Insurance is actually a misnomer as lives can only be assured not insured.

Over Fifties Life Insurance