by Chris Funnell

Imagine you are shopping for a life insurance policy. After much deliberation and research, you’ve finally decided that you do indeed want a life insurance policy. And you feel you’ve gained enough background information to begin actively comparing rates.

The next step is to find and compare life insurance premiums from a number of top Canadian companies. Speed is important because you’d like to check this off your ‘to-do’ list, and rates may increase as you get older.

Let’s look at 6 shortcuts that can cut time when comparing life insurance premiums:

Take advantage of the power of the Internet

1. The Internet has definitely changed the speed at which we can learn about certain products. If you’re looking for life insurance companies to compare their offered life insurance premiums, you can easily search for them on the Internet in just a few clicks, and you’ll be on your way to finding several top candidates to choose from. What’s important is finding websites that offer free services, like TermCanada.com that allows you to easily run your own quotes. You’ll be surprised at the number of people who aren’t aware they can quickly & easily compare rates online.

Take advantage of websites that use Independent Comparison Software

2. When you do a search on the Internet, you’ll most likely find yourself with a number of insurance companies and their websites. It can be time consuming to search through each one and compare against each other. There are some single websites however, like TermCanada.com and Term4sale.ca that allow you to compare life insurance premiums across all life insurance companies in Canada without bias.

Be aware of the type of insurance that you want

3. When you’re ready to compare life insurance premiums it will be a big help if you already know the specifics of the type of life insurance (for example term life insurance) that you want. This will greatly reduce the comparison speed, because you can already cut out those life insurance policies that you don’t want. Most automated life insurance quote websites will ask you to specify your preferred life insurance type from the start, which will streamline your quotes.

Know how much life insurance you want

4. Since you already know the kind of life insurance that you want, you may have already done a basic computation about how much life insurance you need or want. If not, you can simply use the standard 10x to 12x your salary figure as a starting point. Some websites offer an Income Calculator for this purpose. The amount of life insurance you want has a direct bearing on the life insurance premiums that you’ll be paying, so having a rough idea of the amount of insurance you need will help narrow your results.

Enter your correct basic information

5. When requesting for life insurance quotes you will be requested to provide certain personal information like age, gender, smoking status and other pertinent data. This information will be used to calculate the life insurance premiums you will be required to pay. If you are quite honest with all the data that you provide, you’ll have a more accurate reading of the life insurance premiums that you’ll be paying. If you hide certain facts about your life, like health issues, your application and subsequent life insurance premiums may be revoked or rates re-calculated based on the new information.

Create a list of your Top 3 Insurance Companies in Canada & Compare

6. With your lowest cost quotes in hand, you may become aware some have special discounts such as multi-life or backdating discounts, unique underwriting such as possible preferred rates, or attractive product features such as having a 5-Year Exchange Option. Also, when comparing the lowest life insurance premiums, you may also consider the size and reputation of the top companies. Ideally one of your top quotes come from a brand name Canadian Life Insurance Company that you know and trust.