Policy Second Opinion
Work out which parts of an existing life insurance policy are worth examining, and what to ask about them.
Not knowing is common, and is itself worth raising at a review.
Areas Worth Reviewing
- Expiration
- Term policies end. Find the exact end date, whether the policy can be converted to permanent cover without new medical questions, and by when that conversion option expires — conversion windows usually close well before the term does.
- Current objectives
- You said the objective is protecting your family. Check the cover against what it is actually replacing today — income, remaining mortgage term, and how long dependants will need support — rather than against what those were when the policy was bought.
- Beneficiaries
- Confirm the named primary and contingent beneficiaries are still the people you intend, especially after any marriage, divorce, birth or death.
- Death benefit
- You listed $250,000 of cover. The question is not whether that is a big number, but whether it still matches what it is meant to replace — income, a mortgage, or specific costs.
- Premium
- Check whether the premium is guaranteed for the life of the policy or can be increased by the carrier, and what happens if a payment is missed.
- Guarantees
- Establish what the carrier is contractually obliged to do, separately from anything shown in an illustration.
- Loan balances
- Confirm no loans or assignments are recorded against the policy.
Questions to put to a professional
- Can I have a current in-force illustration, showing both guaranteed and current assumptions?
- What exactly is guaranteed in this contract, and what is only projected?
- When does this policy end, or when could it lapse?
- Who is named as beneficiary, primary and contingent?
- Can this policy be converted to permanent cover, and by what date?
- How are you compensated if I keep this policy, and how are you compensated if I change it?
This is an educational checklist, not advice, and not a recommendation to keep, change, replace or surrender any policy.
Replacing an existing life insurance policy can be the right decision or a costly one. It depends on your current health and insurability, surrender charges, a new contestability period, and tax consequences — none of which this tool can assess.
Only a licensed professional reviewing your actual contract can tell you what it does. Policy illustrations and summaries frequently differ from the contract language that governs.
What this calculator does
A second opinion on a life insurance policy is genuinely valuable. An automated verdict on one is not — and would be the exact thing worth being suspicious of.
Whether replacing a policy makes sense depends on your current health and whether you would still qualify for cover, on surrender charges, on a fresh contestability period, and on tax consequences. None of that is visible to a web form, and a tool that concluded “replace this” from six fields would be guessing about decisions that are expensive to get wrong.
So this produces a checklist instead: which areas of your policy are worth examining given what you have described, why each one matters, and the specific questions to put to whoever reviews it.
How the maths works
- Take the nine areas any policy review should cover: death benefit, premium, expiration, cash value, policy charges, guarantees, beneficiaries, loan balances, and current objectives.
- Keep the ones that apply to the kind of policy you described — cash value and internal charges matter on permanent cover and not on term.
- Order them by what you flagged as a concern, so the thing that prompted you comes first.
- Turn them into questions you can take to a licensed professional.
Frequently asked questions
- Will this tell me whether to keep or replace my policy?
- No, deliberately. That decision turns on your current insurability, surrender charges, a new contestability period and tax treatment — none of which this tool can see. Anything that claims otherwise from a short form is guessing, and the cost of guessing wrong here falls entirely on you.
- What is an in-force illustration, and why does it keep coming up?
- It is a current projection of what your policy will actually do, requested from the carrier, as opposed to the illustration you were shown when it was sold. On permanent policies the two frequently differ, and the difference is the single most informative document in a review.
- Can I upload my policy documents?
- Not here. Policy documents contain names, policy numbers and medical context, and accepting them responsibly needs encrypted storage, retention rules and a deletion path that this site does not have. Bring the documents to the conversation instead — that is where they are actually read.
- I do not know what kind of policy I have.
- That is a common and perfectly reasonable answer, and the checklist accounts for it. Establishing what the policy actually is comes first, and the questions here are written so you can ask exactly that.
This is an educational checklist, not advice, and not a recommendation to keep, change, replace or surrender any policy.
Replacing an existing life insurance policy can be the right decision or a costly one, depending on your health and insurability, surrender charges, a new contestability period, and tax consequences.
Only a licensed professional reviewing your actual contract can tell you what it does.
Your answers did not point strongly toward one specific area.
A general review can help identify which parts of your protection plan are worth a closer look.