Life Assurance
Life insurance is a method of mitigating the risk faced by the policyholder’s family members and dependents in case of death of the policyholder. Life Assurance package gives the assurance of money provided when required. In case of death of the policyholder, the insurer agrees to pay certain consideration as specified in the policy to the next of kin of the insured. Now days it has become an essential component in the planning of future.
The Life Assurance offered by insurers fall under three categories. Term life insurance is the basic kind with pure insurance and no cash value appreciation. Whole life insurance involves basic insurance plus an appreciation in the cash value of amount given as a part of premium. Universal life insurance has all features of whole life policy and is more flexible. Life Assurance

Term life insurance is the basic Life Assurance policy for a specified period --usually 5, 10 or 20 years and costs the least among all policies. It just pays a specified lump sum amount to the person designated by the insured upon the insured’s death. It does not involve any cash value appreciation. The policy limit and payout in the case of death are the same. In other words, a $100,000 policy will pay $100,000 in the event of the death of the insured.

Whole life insurance policy offers the facility of term policy and a customized appreciation in the cash value paid as a part of premium. Thus, the premiums for a $100,000 whole life policy are higher than of $100,000 term life policy. Life Assurance
The maturity of such a policy can happen before the death of the insured. The payment at the time of maturity of policy involves the insured amount plus a tax-deferred cash value of the payments as part of premiums.

Universal life insurance combines the whole life policy with a certain amount of flexibility. The flexibility it offers is in terms of borrowing ability before maturity of policy, premium and face amount and also the tractability to choose the amount of protection that best suits your family or business

Yet another variant is variable life insurance, which involves variation in death benefit in return of cash value account. Universal variable life insurance offers the maximum flexibility of all types of life insurance policies.

Term life insurance results in a payment only in case of the death of the insured. On the other hand, permanent insurance results in a payment in any case. Thus, permanent insurance is a somewhat forced saving which may not have happened in case of term insurance. Universal insurance is a flexible premium policy under which the policy owner can customize the death benefit any time according his needs.

The premiums in case of term life insurance in the beginning are lower than permanent insurance. However, the term insurance premiums increase with the age but remain fixed in the case of permanent insurance. Many people say, “Buy term and invest the difference” but it may not be true any longer because with the flexibility offered by universal and variable life insurance policies.