Riders Slow Down Life Insurance Shopping

Sometimes we can get the coverage our family needs most affordably by tailoring our life insurance policy with riders. Altering our policy from the standard product may impose a hidden cost, however, and that is that find the most affordable life insurance quotes becomes slower and harder, particularly in the case of term life insurance, which is ordinarilly a snap to shop for.

Riders are most commonly used to expand a policy's coverage. E.g. coverage can be extended to cover both you and your spouse or child by means of a spouse rider or a child rider. Riders may even reduce the coverage a policy provides (and likewise reduce the cost of coverage). The important point, though, is that riders generally change the price of a policy in some way. And therein lies the difficulty.

Because standard life insurance products (that is, policies with no riders) are drawn up in advance, the actuaries (mathematicians) at the insurance company have already determined how much those policies should cost for any sort of insurable person. Because these numbers stand at the ready, it's relatively easy to compare term life insurance quotes from many insurers at once: a shopper can visit an independent life insurance agency online, enter his or her health information, and in the blink of an eye, compare quoted prices from dozens of insurers.

If that same shopper wishes to attach a rider to his/her policy, however, there's no way to instantly compare life insurance quotes from the comfort of his/her own personal computer. The only option is to speak with an actual, licensed agent. Fortunately, some riders are common enough that a life insurance quotes comparison can be effected in a rather timely fashion, even when working through an agent. Some common riders include the spouse rider, child rider, and accidental death rider. With more eccentric riders, however, a shopper may find his/her experience severely retarded or even find insurers unwilling to create the requested provision.

Because term life insurance ordinarily makes it possible to compare rates in an instance and even apply for coverage online with the investment of only a few minutes, the inconvenience of being individually considered for a rider is a considerable one. However, in the case of whole life insurance, obtaining and comparing life insurance quotes takes considerably more work anyway—even on standard, traditional whole life policies. Ergo, the delay which a rider imposes on one's application is proportionally less. It may be worth the time, then to request whatever riders you may want.