I'm a lifer (Legal & General)

Member Name: cswann

Product:	Legal & General
Date:	27/01/04 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap insurance, Online application very easy

Disadvantages: May not be cheap for everyone

Legal and General offers a wide variety of financial products:
savings and investments; pensions; mortgages; and various kinds of insurance.

They are one of the top 50 FTSE companies, and they claim to be involved in 1in 10 of all housing transactions in the UK (or were in the year up until December 2002) – that’s a big, big company, then.

This review, however, is only looking at their life insurance. Because that's the only product I've bought from them.

Life insurance is something I used to try to avoid paying for. If it’s included in something like an endowment policy or a pension plan, I’ve probably had cover of some kind, no doubt very rudimentary, but I’d never paid anything extra to a life insurance company.
Recently, though, I had to get something sorted out due to sorting out a remortgage, and looking at our whole financial situation generally, it just made sense to look after whoever was going to be left if I pop my clogs.
All the same, as a reasonably healthy person, and with parents and grandparents who either are or were, very longlived… I still didn’t want to pay out huge amounts. Well, life insurance always seems like a waste of money to anyone who assumes their family is not going to make use of it, doesn’t it?

After looking on the Internet for quotes (I recommend www.moneysupermarket for this), it soon became clear that I wouldn’t be able to get anything much cheaper than a monthly premium of £6.00. I was only looking for £34,000 worth of cover, enough to pay a mortgage off, but even if I reduced the amount of cover to less than that, it made no difference – I couldn’t get any lower minimum payments. Makes sense, I suppose – it’s hardly going to worth an insurer’s while to collect something like £3.00 a month from anyone.

Legal and General quickly stood out as not only one of the cheapest monthly
premiums, but it also stood out as the most famous name in my shortlist. I’m not saying “famous = reputable”, necessarily, but it did help me to make my decision.

The application process was incredibly easy, and all of it was carried out online.
I had to sign a form which arrived in the post as part of the final agreement, but other than that it all seemed to sort itself out. Direct debits from my bank were also sorted out this way. Definitely no hassle.

I pay just £6.00 a month, which provides life cover of £34,000.
This means “guaranteed life cover.”
There is terminal illness cover, as well – as long as this is not diagnosed within the last 18 months of the plan’s term.

Clearly I must stress that everyone’s situation is different – for anyone looking for specific benefits, this policy may not be for you. I’m a non-smoker, which would have reduced my premiums.

There’s a choice between “term assurance”, and within that standard, or decreasing, and “whole of life” policies. Really, it’s all very dependent on what you need. For further information you are best checking out the website at:
www.legalandgeneral.com
where there’s plenty of straightforward help, including a calculator which will help you to see wqhat kind of premiums you might end up with.

- Ethical considerations
I always have a problem with big financial institutions, i.e. excluding mutual organisations, and had expected a company like Legal and General to be not very impressive on the ethical stakes. When I looked into it, they did relatively well on this score. Legal and General apparently has invested in the Indonesian logging (hardwood) industry – not something I wish to support, but it seems like it’s the only black mark against them, and I can help the campaign by writing to them as a customer. All in all, they cam
e out far better than many, many other insurance providers (Direct Line, Norwich Union, First Direct, Cornhill, for example)
Details of the above appeared in an Ethical Consumer magazine survey (published January 2003 )

Overall, I am satisfied with the product I have, and was very pleased with the service I received from Legal and General.

Summary: