LifeInsurance

Take the annual income your family depends on, multiply by the years they would depend on it, add every liability including the home loan and any business loan you have personally guaranteed, add funded goals like children's education at inflated cost, then subtract existing investments and existing cover. For most working Indians in their thirties with dependants and a home loan the honest figure lands between fifteen and twenty-five times annual income — not the ten times commonly quoted.

For protection, yes, and it is not close — term cover buys several times the sum assured per rupee of premium. Endowment and unit-linked plans bundle investment into the premium, which is why the same money buys so much less cover. Keep the two decisions separate: buy term for protection, invest the difference deliberately. Bundled products have a role in a plan, but not as a substitute for adequate cover.

Overwhelmingly, yes — Indian insurers now settle the large majority of individual death claims, and published claim-settlement ratios are high across major companies. The claims that fail are concentrated in non-disclosure: a health condition, a habit, or an income figure misstated at proposal. Declare everything, accept the loading if there is one, and the policy does its job. We would rather place a loaded policy that pays than a clean one that is contested.

For meaningful sums assured, almost always — and you should want it. A policy issued after full medical underwriting is far harder to contest later, because the insurer assessed your health at the outset. Products advertising no medical test typically compensate with smaller cover, higher pricing, or tighter early-claim scrutiny.

Until your dependants are financially independent or your liabilities are cleared, whichever is later. Paying premiums into decades when nobody relies on your income is money solving a problem you no longer have. For most people that means cover to somewhere between 60 and 70, not 99.

Yes. Indian insurers issue term cover to non-resident Indians, and premiums are generally lower than equivalent cover in the Gulf or the West. Underwriting may require a medical in India or an accepted overseas equivalent, and the country you reside in affects eligibility with some insurers. We check that before you apply rather than after.