GENEROUS ENDOWMENTS
IF YOU THOUGHT life insurance was just about protecting your loved ones financially when you die (although that’s very important, of course) think again.
Endowment life insurance not only provides the protection described above, it also allows you to save for the future in a long-term way. There are two main types - with-profits and […]

THE WHOLE TRUTH (about whole life insurance)
AS ITS NAME suggests (and until recently it was called whole of life insurance), whole life insurance pays out whenever you die and is not limited to a specific period (other than your lifespan) like term life insurance.
Not surprisingly, the premiums work out dearer than with term assurance (the […]

Insurance companies are to scrap an “anachronistic exemption” that allows them to discriminate against gay couples when assessing the cost of life insurance and other protection products. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said that the majority of insurers did not discriminate in any case and all life insurance companies would cease to do so […]

TERM-TIME
We saw in the last life insurance masterclass (see September archive) that there are three basic categories - term, whole life and endowment life insurance.
Term means simply that the life insurance cover lasts for a certain period (term) of time, often 25 years to coincide with a mortgage.
There are different types of term life insurance, explained […]

MAGIC OF THE MOVIES 
Harry Potter has become the biggest box office film series (£2.2bn) in the history of cinema, beating Star Wars (£2bn) and James Bond (£2.19bn). The latest film - The Order of the Phoenix - has itself taken more than £454m. There are still two films to come before the sequence ends.
LLOYDS TSB WINS APPROVAL
Lloyds […]

French Connection and Next, two of the country’s top fashion retailers, have warned of tough trading conditions ahead as the impact of interest rate rises filters down to consumers.
Next recorded profits up 11% at £198.2m in the past six months, but noted in its results statement that there is “economic pressure on consumers to reduce their […]

For far too long it was just too easy. Invitations to take out credit cards and personal loans dropped through the nation’s letterboxes by the ton and, boy, did we go for them. Life, as the poet Philip Larkin once said, was “A brilliant breaking of the bank/A quite unlosable game” - courtesy of the credit-mongers.
But […]

The number of people seeking advice on debt has gone up 20% in the past 12 months, according to the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB).
CAB said debt is now the priority issue it tackles on an ongoing basis, with 1.7 million people seeking help for financial problems last year - working out to 6,600 debt enquiries […]