Ask yourself the one question, who will protect my family and loved ones, if I’m not around?  Will they have enough to cover their financial needs?  Is my family’s future secure?

The best tool for securing the future of you and your family is a Life Insurance policy.  The necessity and importance of life insurance can be summed into the three reasons below:

1.      It is a financial instrument that allows you to protect your family and loved ones when you are gone.

2.      It is a tool to finance your objectives from education to retirement while you are alive.

3.      It protects you from unforeseen handicaps in life.

Most Nigerians don’t recognize the need for life insurance coverage.  Only about 19% of Nigerian households feel they need life insurance coverage even among the affluent households.  Consider what happens to a family if the primary breadwinner were to die today:

·         It will take an average of four-to-five years for the widow and widowers financial circumstance to return to what it was before the untimely death of the bread winner.

·         A shown in a recent study, income of those left behind will declines by 35%, during the year of death, and another 60% the year after death. Assets also decline to cover medical, burial, and other expenses.

Studies have shown that most people, who do not have insurance coverage, don’t have enough when disaster hits.  Though, nobody ever prays for disaster, they are unfortunate events of life.  When disaster hits, 30% of those affected, would immediately have trouble meeting everyday living expenses. Another 45% would have difficulty keeping up with expenses after several months.

Getting Life Insurance is one half of the solution.  Getting adequate coverage is the second half of the solution.  When coverage is inadequate there is not enough coverage to materially improve the finances of the deceased's household.  Some 45 percent of widows and 37 percent of widowers say their spouse was inadequately insured or did not know anything or trust insuring at all. One to two years after the death, half the widows and one third of the widowers are just getting by financially.

At this point, it is important to point out that life insurance does not only suffice when you or your spouse is gone but when you are alive too.

Life insurance can be used to:

• Supplement your retirement.  Take the example of a man who lost his job because of an accident which cost him his hands. His Life cover helped him to recover from his forced early retirement, the compensation claims helped cover the expenses of raising his children.
• Preserve your estate.
• Safeguard your home mortgage, if you have one.  Mortgages are getting more and more popular in Nigeria.

What life insurance does is as follows:

• Meet the needs of your family when you are gone.   By making provisions to take care of your family in case of unplanned emergencies, you are guaranteeing that your family will continue to receive income.
• Give your survivors choices about their future - if you do not own a home, your life insurance might pay off the rent so your family can stay in the house rather than being forced to move out.
• Provide an income to let your family maintain its standard of living and cover everyday expenses such as groceries, bills, rent, the mortgage, etc.
• Set at least enough money to take care of your final expenses so your loved ones won't have to worry about these costs.

It is important that you take a Life insurance policy and/or whole life policies today to guarantee valuable peace of mind to your family and their future. The cost of this type of life cover is a small price to pay for the peace of mind that comes with being protected, and you can increase this peace of mind by adding extras such as critical illness (health cover) to your policy for just a small extra fee.