There are only two things in life that are guaranteed: death and taxes. Your tax bill will come and go as the years roll on, but death will loom larger and larger in the horizon. How are you going to prepare your family for that moment, especially if it happens unexpectedly before you reach retirement age?
We are all busy with family and work, so it might feel as if you don’t have time to ponder the mysteries of life after death. But being busy is no excuse for not planning properly. You need to lay out how you’ll take care of your family’s financial life after your death. This is where life insurance comes into play.
I spent some time trying to find the easiest, most expedient places to get a competitive life insurance quote. My focus was on quote aggregators, or websites that find the most competitive quotes from multiple sources. This was a time saving effort — why go to individual insurance providers to enter my data time and time again?
Learn More: When Should Millennials Start Looking at Life Insurance?
Here’s what I found, and how you can research your own best life insurance plans. This will make it easier to both find and purchase. Let’s get started.
Rules of the Game
For this fact-finding mission, I laid some ground rules to help narrow down the choices of where I will shop for life insurance.
- Rule 1: I should be able to get a quote before having to talk to a human.
- Rule 2: I want to provide only a minimal amount of contact information to get a quote.
- Rule 3: It should take me no more than 3 minutes to receive a quote.
If these three rules are satisfied, then I will accept having to make a phone call to complete the application process. That seems like a reasonable demand.
Following the rules, I scoured the interwebs to see who fit the bill. I did not visit individual brokers like State Farm, MetLife, or John Hancock. However, I did discover quote-finding websites that didn’t follow these rules. So, what do we do with rule breakers? Exclude them from the prize category at the end of this article.
What Kind of Data Do They Need?
All online life insurance forms wanted to know a little about me before giving out a quote for a term life insurance plan. Insurers will look at demographic data, then put me in an underwriting class. This is a fancy way of assigning a probability as to how likely I am to die during the coverage period of my insurance.
Insurers also want to know about my health history. Major health problems will increase premiums, and a history of no health problems will decrease premiums.
Finally, insurers need to know if I have habits and hobbies that are more likely to cause my untimely death. You know, things like skydiving and scuba diving with Great White Sharks (with or without a shark cage, it doesn’t matter). Each website I visited wanted a different amount of data. I strongly favored those companies that needed less info at the beginning of the quote process, because I want to quickly narrow my choices of top competing bids.
Resource: How to Ensure That Your Life Insurance Proceeds are Tax-Free
Here are examples of the three areas in which insurers collect data:
- Demographics – Height, Weight, Birthdate, Coverage Amount, Term Length
- General Health History – Questions like this:
- Life Habits – Check the box if you live on the wild side.
Baseline Assumptions
For my research model, I’m going to play the role of a 40-year-old male with no major-medical history. No DUI’s, no traffic tickets in the last 5 years, and no dangerous activities… all things actuaries are looking to put in their magical calculations to guess how soon you’ll die. Hypothetical Me will live somewhere in the United States and want $1 million in 10-year, term life coverage.
The Websites
After going through quite a few online options, here’s what I found.
Potential Winners: Quotacy
Quotacy is a term life-only, hassle-free insurance finder. They provide not only a “how much do I need?” calculator to determine the right coverage amount, but also promise free instant life insurance quotes. I like that they address my three rules right on their home page.
I provided the basics – zip code, gender, birthdate, said I didn’t smoke, and selected “show rates in monthly format.” That’s it. I then had a quote in 60 seconds.
As a bonus, they provided an easy sliding scale model to adjust my policy value and coverage duration. This instantly modified the premium based on my inputs.
Now that I got that out of the way, I compared policies. This is where I could select my favorite plan, personalize the coverage, and provide detailed health data to produce a more accurate price quote.
They only asked four questions, which made the whole process take about 2 minutes. To make it even sweeter, I could adjust the policy value/duration on the competitive quotes page and see more instant updates.
Lowest 10-year quote: $30.84/month for $1,000,000 coverage
Pros:
- Speed
- Simplicity
- Over 10 competing quotes from major providers
- Clean, non-spammy website
Cons: None
Policy Genius
With an A+ BBB rating, Policy Genius was off to a good start. It took a full three minutes to get a quote, but the results were satisfactory.
After I got my quote, they roped me into trying out their Insurance Checkup™, an interesting and well thought out tool to help users determine what kind of coverage and types of insurance they need. At the end of the investigation, they recommended I get a few additional types of insurance, i.e., renters, disability, or pet insurance. I appreciated the insight that the checkup tool provided.
Learn More: Do You Need Life Insurance After You Retire?
Policy genius wanted me to think of them as “a free, independent advisor working to get you the best coverage,” and their life insurance quote process came up with 14 policy matches. At any time, I could adjust the filters to modify my coverage amount, term, and see updated results.
Lowest 10-year quote: $30.84 for $1,000,000 coverage.
Notice a trend in the prices? Mutual of Omaha is the company that consistently beat all other insurers in price, at least for my underwriting class.
Pros:
- Insurance Checkup Tool
- Speed
- Competing quote
Cons:
- I had to provide an email address to use the Checkup tool
LifeQuotes.Com
LifeQuotes boasts the ability to compare rates of up to 50 companies at a time. I selected my state and coverage amount, provided minimal demographic data, and voila! I had quotes on both level term and return of premium within 3 minutes. They ranged from 5 to 30 year term, and also included lifetime plans.
Money experts will recommend you choose term life. If you are curious about “return of premium” and lifetime coverage, though, you can quickly see the difference in monthly payments.
You’ll automatically see the top three plans for each time horizon, based on lowest monthly premium. Clicking on any of the plans will reveal the financial strength rating of the insurer, policy details, and acceptance guidelines. This information should be easy to find, so kudos to LifeQuotes for recognizing that.
Lowest 10-year quote: $30.89/month for $1,000,000 coverage (paramed required)
Pros:
- Separates policies that do/do not require a medical examination (paramed)
- Provides multiple competing quotes from major insurance companies
- Ability to sort by different types of plans
- Option to complete full application online or over the phone
- Helpful calculator to determine insurance needs
Cons:
- The home page is a bit spammy
Related: How Long Should Your Life Insurance Term Be?
Now what about those that didn’t measure up?
The Losers: Select Quote, Progressive, Life Plans
First up are the ones I immediately eliminated from contention for best, hassle-free life insurance quotes online. While they may be great places to find life insurance, they broke all the rules. I’m required to give my name, address, phone, and email before they’ll send me an email with a promise to call me on the phone.
There’s the chance that they’re little more than a lead generation tool for major insurers. Either way, I’m not comfortable handing over that much personal information before the process even starts.
Sorry, Select Quote, Progressive, and Life Plans. You’ve been eliminated.
Quilt
This is the new kid on the block for hassle-free life (or renters, pet health, and vacation) insurance. Quilt is a small startup that offers policies underwritten by General Life Insurance Company. Their target audience? The millennial generation.
They promise a fast, simple, and 100% online marketplace for insurance, but availability of their insurance products varies by where you live. For example: in my home zip code, I found life insurance through Quilt, but not renter’s insurance.
A.M. Best rated General Life Insurance Company high in the area of Financial Strength and Long Term Issuer Credit Rating. In the end, Quilt won’t win any awards from me, as they can’t provide life insurance amounts greater than $250,000.
Lowest 10-year quote: $48.69/month for $250,000 coverage
Pros:
- Easy to use, fast, and 100% online
Cons:
- It’s a new company: no long-standing track record like larger insurers.
- Products may not be available in your area
- Expensive and only two coverage options ($100k or $250k 10-year term)
And the Winner Is…
What you and I value the most will affect our opinion of the best place to find life insurance. Speed, simplicity, and useful insight are all high on my list of values. This guided my decision in finding the best life insurance providers.
For lowest price, Quotacy and Policy Genius tied. Both companies offered an identical quote from Mutual of Omaha.
Fastest result goes to Life Quotes. A key factor in this was the ability to scan through the 5- to 30-year term life plans without changing inputs.
For the simple category, Quotacy came in first with the fewest questions needed in order to determine my price quote.
The competitive quotes award goes to Life Quotes. They provided the most options, and whether they required a paramed.
Best calculator goes to Policy Genius for its helpful insight.
| Category | Winner |
| Lowest Price | Quotacy/Policy Genius |
| Fastest | Life Quotes |
| Simple | Quotacy |
| Competitive Quotes | Life Quotes |
| Best Calculator | Policy Genius |
The Ultimate Winner
I choose Quotacy as the overall winner of my quest for hassle-free life insurance online. They are simple yet sophisticated, and provide a wide range of quotes from major providers. With a strong track record of 25 years in the business, I’m reassured that they know what they’re doing and will continue to provide great service to customers.
Term life insurance should be a part of your financial plan during your working years. Regardless of which one of these hassle-free websites you use, the bottom line is to make sure we are taking care of our loved ones in case of an unexpected death.
If you have had any experience with these hassle-free life insurance providers, let us know in the comments.
Topics: financial planning • Life Insurance • Money and Life • Personal Finance • Retirement PlanningThe post How to Find the Best Hassle-Free Life Insurance appeared first on The Dough Roller.
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