Living and working as one whose family depends on their financial support can be very risky without a life insurance policy.
In the case of unfortunate eventuality which can come up at any time, only the financial security of your family is what will determine if life won’t become miserable for your dependents.
Though life insurance policies on their own already guarantee a risk cover and some interesting payouts to policyholders, purchasing a rider is an intelligent way to increase the coverage offered by your policy.
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Different Types of Life Insurance Riders
- Accidental death rider
- Waiver of premium rider
- Child term rider
- Guaranteed insurability rider
- Accelerated death benefit rider
- Return of premium rider
- Long-term care rider
What is Insurance Rider?
An insurance rider is a type of specialized coverage that can be purchased in addition to your standard policy. A rider is not a policy on its own and can’t be purchased independently. But it’s added on-demand to help protect a policyholder from certain eventualities.
If you are ready to purchase riders, it’s important that we remind you that it comes with an additional cost but it’s never something you can’t afford. For buying your base insurance policy from a firm, you qualify for their discount on riders.
Instead of trying to maintain a separate policy, we recommend you purchase riders alongside it so that you will get a chance to customize it the way you want.
How Does an Insurance Rider Work?
The first step to purchasing an insurance rider for your life insurance policy is to determine the type of rider you need. For instance, if you’re planning to become pregnant soon, you may want to add a pregnancy rider to your health insurance plan.
A pregnancy rider provides additional insurance coverage that can help manage the costs related to prenatal care, labor and delivery, and other expenses. Generally, adding an insurance rider to your existing policy is relatively easy. Riders require minimal underwriting, which lowers the cost of coverage. In addition, riders offer plenty of flexibility — you can purchase a specific type of coverage now and drop it or exchange it later.
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Types of Life Insurance Riders
Different life insurance companies offer different riders based on the plan you are in. However, some of the most popular riders offered by most life insurance companies are:
1. Critical Illness Riders
When one is diagnosed with a critical illness, it puts significant pressure on the person’s finances. Of course, you already know that healthcare costs across the United States have increased.
Having an understanding of this, it is important that you purchase a Critical Illness Benefits Rider together with your life insurance policy. This will help to take the pressure off your personal finance. However, always ensure you check the specific critical illness that was covered by the rider. We’ve had cases of people losing their insurance coverage in this area.
2. Accidental Death and Disability Rider
Though most life insurance policies provide a risk cover against sudden death, however, when you purchase Accidental Death and Disability Benefit Rider, it guarantees that your insurance nominee will receive a higher payout if anything happens and you are gone. Such eventuality ought to be prepared for.
Additionally, since the regular life insurance policy doesn’t cover the risk of being permanently disabled, purchasing a rider could be your only savior. The payout you will be receiving, though may not be big it will serve as a good income replacement.
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3. Waiver of Premium Rider
Oftentimes, when an eventuality happens and there’s an accident that results in one being disabled, it makes the person impotent to pay for premiums towards his base insurance policy. But with a Waiver of Premium Rider, the policyholder’s future premium payments will be waived off, and he or she will still be eligible to continue receiving the policy benefits as per schedule.
Having said all this, before you purchase riders, make sure the sum of the riders doesn’t exceed the base insurance policy and that both terms are dependent on each other. Are life insurance riders worth it? The answer is yes.