Why Is It Important For Women To Buy Life Insurance?

Life insurance policies are important if you are looking at securing yourself as well as your family’s financial future. Over the years, a life insurance policy has been primarily associated with the key earning member of a family in India. Moreover, in the Indian context men have supposedly been playing the role of the member providing for a family. So, life insurance has been associated with men as compared to women.

Nevertheless, things have changed now and women have started playing a key role in the financial matters and earnings of a family. Women are now financially independent and taking charge of families independently.  Also, unlike earlier women now are aware and not dependent on others for their needs and decisions. Thus, women know about investment plans and understand them too. Moreover, even if they find it difficult to grasp some terms, they make sure to seek guidance so that they can make better buying decisions. So, overall things are changing for good now.

Since women now are focused about investments and  have sound knowledge about what life insurance is, let us talk about the reasons why life insurance is important for women and why should women invest in life insurance?

Importance of Life Insurance Policies for Women

Insurance policies support individuals in numerous ways. Life insurance is one such key insurance plan that allows the insured person to secure his/her own future along with securing the future of their family members or their dependents. Thus, life insurance does serve a great purpose to financially secure people’s lives.

In India, the market of life insurance is growing in a huge way. Millions of families have benefitted from these policies. There are families who could survive because of life insurance after the demise of their head-earning members. So, overall life insurance does have a pivotal role to play. But despite that the number of women insured with life insurance policies is way less as compared to the number of men. In fact, just about 32 % of people insured with life insurance policies are women in India.

The reasons could be varied including:

Lack of interest and awareness in financial matters among women, especially in rural India
Low salaries of women for the same work and with same qualifications as compared to men
Setback in the health front of women due to having babies and other health issues, which lower their chances of getting reasonable life insurance plans with greater coverage
Further, many health issues concerning women such as osteoporosis or arthritis are not covered under many insurance plans
These reasons show why many women lack the opportunity of buying life insurance. However, that doesn’t mean that women should not avail insurance policies as there are several reasons for women to have a life insurance plan.

6 Reasons Why Women Need Life Insurance

Among the many reasons why women need life insurance, below are some points to consider:

1. To achieve financial freedom –  It is very important for a woman to be financially independent. By availing policies like life insurance money-back plan and ULIPs among others, women can gain financial security for herself and her family. Moreover, she can avail such policies even if she is not a key earning member of the family. The guaranteed payouts offered with such plans would help to enhance her financial independence, while reducing her dependency on others
2. To enhance financial security for the family – By buying a term life insurance plan at a low cost, a woman can provide for her family the security of money in case of her demise due to any reason. So, if the woman is a single mother or someone with many dependents, the term plan will allow her to secure her family. Hence, if there is an unfortunate case, the death benefit received by the members would support the dependents to sail through the crisis
3. To accumulate money for any particular purpose – Women can invest money in different investment plans including life insurance plans and save money for specific purposes like child’s education, paying off home/car loans etc. This way, they can even support their spouses
4. To have a happy post-retirement life – Once you retire, your source of regular income ceases to come. Hence, you require savings to continue your life as usual. For this, it is important to save under a good plan of life insurance for women or a retirement plan which could provide you regular income post-retirement. If a woman saves enough on a retirement policy, she could survive on her own without any dependency on others
5. To endure sudden monetary emergencies –  Since life is uncertain, having a backup plan, especially a financial plan, is important. So, women can choose to buy among the various types of life insurance plans that help them to deal with the sudden unforeseen situations coming their way. Hence, it is good to have a life insurance plan to help in building a corpus to survive through financial emergencies
6. To cover medical needs and costs –  Another major reason for women to invest in life insurance policies is to cover them against critical illnesses. These days, critical diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular ailments etc. have become so common. So, having a cover to protect against such illnesses is important. A life insurance policy offering coverage against critical illness will support women in bearing such huge medical expenditure. Most life insurance policies allow the insured to choose coverage from among 59 critical diseases. So, depending on your choice the insurer will cover you against such diseases.