Term insurance
The only product we sell whose best outcome is that nobody ever claims on it
Term insurance pays your family a lump sum if you die during the term, and pays nothing if you do not. That is the whole product, and the reason it costs a fraction of what you have probably been shown instead.
- Sizing
- A multiple of income
- Premium
- Level for the full term
- Payout
- Paid to your nominee
- Oversight
- IRDAI-regulated
What term insurance actually is
A term policy is pure cover. You pay a premium for a fixed number of years, and if you die inside that window your nominee receives the sum assured. If you outlive the term, the policy ends and nothing comes back.
No maturity value
Nothing is returned at the end. That absence is what makes the cover large and the premium small.
A level premium
The premium is set from your age and health at the point the policy starts, and stays flat for the whole term.
A lump sum to a nominee
The claim is paid to the person you name, as one amount, outside the delays of an estate. Some insurers allow it staggered as monthly income instead.
Age is priced in once
Premiums are higher the later you start, and a policy bought younger stays at that lower level for its whole life. It is a fact about pricing, not a reason to hurry.
How much cover, and for how long
Cover is usually sized to replace the income your dependants would lose, clear what you owe, and stop at the point your family no longer depends on your earnings. The band below is the range families in a similar position commonly consider. It is arithmetic, not a figure for you.
A range commonly considered
14× to 20× an income of ₹20 L, plus ₹30 L of loans, less ₹0 L already covered.
This is a range families in a similar position commonly consider, not a figure suited to you. Your health, your spouse's earnings and what your dependants would inherit all move it. Underwriting sits with the insurer, not with Zenith.
What actually gets a term claim rejected
Almost always non-disclosure at the proposal stage, not a technicality at the claim stage. The insurer is pricing your life on what you tell it, and anything material you leave out gives it grounds to contest. Everything below is answered on the proposal form.
| What people get wrong | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Undeclared medical history | A diagnosis, a hospitalisation or a prescription left off the form is the single most common reason a claim is contested. Declare it and the insurer may load the premium or exclude a condition. Both outcomes beat a repudiated claim. |
| Tobacco use | Occasional counts. Cotinine shows up in the medical, and a non-smoker rate on a smoker's life is a straightforward misstatement. The smoker premium is higher; it is also payable. |
| Overstated income | Cover is granted as a multiple of proven income. Inflate it to get a larger sum assured and the claim team will read the ITRs later, when your family cannot correct the record. |
| Policies already held elsewhere | Every existing policy, including employer cover and anything lapsed, has to be listed. Insurers check the industry database. Concealment here taints an otherwise clean file. |
Section 45, Insurance Act 1938
After three years from the date the policy commenced, or from its revival or the date of a rider being added, whichever is later, an insurer cannot call the policy into question on any ground, including fraud or misstatement. Inside those three years it can, and it will ask. Which is why the form matters most on the day you fill it in.
The three-year clock
What an insurer may and may not do, and when it stops being able to.
- Day 1
Cover starts
The policy is in force and a claim is payable, subject to the proposal having been answered honestly.
- Year 1
Suicide exclusion ends
The standard twelve-month exclusion falls away.
- Years 1 to 3
The insurer may contest
It can question the policy for misstatement or non-disclosure, and on an early claim it will ask.
- Year 3
Incontestable
Section 45 bars the insurer from calling the policy into question on any ground, including fraud.
The clock restarts from the date of revival if a lapsed policy is revived, and from the date a rider is added. Which is why the proposal form matters most on the day you fill it in.
The block this page exists for
Why we will not sell you an endowment or a ULIP
If you asked for life cover and were shown a plan that gives your money back, you were shown a product that pays the person selling it several times more. We sell those products too. We will not sell you one in place of term cover, and this section costs us money to publish.
The problem is not that mixed insurance-and-investment plans are fraudulent. It is that they are two mediocre products stapled together, and the staple is expensive.
| Endowment or ULIP | Term cover, invested separately | |
|---|---|---|
| Cover you get | Typically ten times the annual premium, so a household paying a serious premium still ends up with cover a fraction of what its income needs. | The full sum assured your income supports, because the premium is buying nothing else. |
| Where the money goes | Into one opaque pot: mortality charge, commission, administration and a bonus declared at the insurer's discretion. You cannot see the split, and neither can we. | Two visible lines. A premium you can compare across insurers, and an investment with a published expense ratio you can leave whenever you want. |
| What it earns | Marketed on words like guaranteed and assured. Those are the seller's words, not ours. What a traditional plan actually returns over its full term has historically sat close to a fixed deposit, once the cover embedded in it is priced out. | Whatever the asset class returns, good and bad, visible every month. |
| Cost of stopping early | Surrender in the early years and you take back a fraction of what you paid. Roughly a third of these policies do not survive to maturity, and the loss is borne by the family that could least afford the premium. | Pause the investment with no penalty. The cover continues as long as the premium is paid, and only that premium is at stake. |
| What the seller earns | Regulation permits a substantially higher first-year commission on a traditional plan, on a much larger premium. This is the actual reason you were shown one. | A small commission on a small premium. We are telling you to buy the version that pays us least. |
Riders, and which ones you probably already have
A rider is an add-on bolted to the base policy for an extra premium. Two of the five below are worth the money for most people. The rest usually duplicate cover you hold already through an employer or a separate health policy.
Accidental death benefit
Pays an extra sum if death is by accident. Cheap, because accidental death is rare. Check your employer's group personal accident cover first.
Often duplicatedWaiver of premium
If you are permanently disabled or diagnosed with a listed illness, future premiums stop and the cover stays. The one rider that protects the policy itself.
Rarely duplicatedCritical illness
A lump sum on diagnosis of a listed condition, subject to a survival period. Useful, but frequently already held as a standalone health rider.
Often duplicatedIncome payout option
Converts part of the claim into a monthly stream for your family instead of one amount. A structuring choice, not extra cover.
Structure onlyReturn of premium
Gives your premiums back if you survive the term, and costs roughly double for the same cover. It is the endowment argument in a smaller box.
Adds cost, not cover
Two things almost nobody sets up
Name a nominee, then update it
A policy with no nominee, or one still naming a parent after a marriage, sends the claim into succession instead of into a bank account. Review the nomination after a marriage, a birth or a death, and keep the insurer's acknowledgement.
Tell the nominee the policy exists and where the document is. Claims go unpaid because nobody knew to make them.
Write it under the MWP Act 1874
A policy written under the Married Women's Property Act 1874 creates a trust for your wife and children. The proceeds sit outside your estate and beyond the reach of creditors, which matters if you have a business or a personal guarantee behind a loan.
It is a form filled at proposal, it costs nothing, and it cannot be added later or reversed. Decide before you sign.
Tax treatment
Premium qualifies for deduction under section 80C in the old regime, within the overall limit and only if you have not moved to the new regime. The death benefit is exempt in the nominee's hands under section 10(10D). Tax law changes; check the position for the year you are filing.
Why LIC is different here
IRDAI permits an individual agent to be appointed by one life insurer, and no more. Rajesh ji has been LIC's agent since 1993. So LIC sits directly on his own licence, and every other life insurer on this page is placed through the Motilal Oswal partnership. Two routes, disclosed, because you should know which one your policy travels on.
Route one
LIC, placed directly
On the agency code held by Rajesh Kumar Pancholi since 1993. Servicing, endorsements and claim support come from us.
Route two
Every other insurer, via Motilal Oswal
Placed through the Motilal Oswal franchise, which holds the IRDAI registration. Issuance and underwriting are the insurer's; the conversation and the claim support are still ours.
The insurers we can place8
How Zenith gets paid
The insurer pays a commission out of the premium you would pay regardless. Nothing is charged to you by Zenith, and there is no fee for the conversation, the paperwork or the claim support afterwards. Commission rates sit within IRDAI limits and are disclosed in your policy document. Ask us what a specific policy pays us and we will tell you before you sign it.
Questions people actually ask
Yes, provided the policy is in force and the proposal was answered honestly. Early claims are investigated more closely because Section 45 allows the insurer three years to question the policy. An accurate form is what makes a first-year claim straightforward. Suicide within twelve months is the standard exclusion.
Yes. Declare it. Insurers test for cotinine at the medical and treat occasional use as smoking. The smoker premium is meaningfully higher, and it is still far less than the cost of your family being handed a repudiation letter. Quitting for a sustained period can be re-underwritten later.
Rarely. Group cover is usually a small multiple of salary, it ends the day you leave or are made redundant, and it cannot be carried to the next job. Treat it as a supplement to a policy you own, not as the cover itself.
A term policy lapses after the grace period, usually thirty days, and the cover stops with it. There is no surrender value to fall back on. Most insurers allow revival within five years with fresh health declarations, and Section 45 restarts from the date of revival.
Consider what would have to be paid for if that person were not there, including childcare and the care of elderly parents. Insurers will underwrite a homemaker for a limited sum assured, usually linked to the earning spouse's cover.
Usually to the point your dependants stop relying on your income, which for most households is retirement or the year the youngest child finishes education, whichever is later. Cover running to age 85 costs a great deal more to protect years in which nobody depends on you.
Yes, and many families do it to split a large sum assured. Each proposal must disclose the other. Two policies mean two claims to make, which is more paperwork for your nominee but removes the single point of failure.
For meaningful cover, almost always, and you should want one. A policy underwritten on a completed medical is much harder to contest later than one issued on declarations alone. The insurer pays for the test.
Less than the marketing suggests. It counts claims across an insurer's whole book, most of them small and decades old. Read it as a rough floor rather than a ranking, and pay more attention to how a claim is filed and how long settlement takes.
Do not surrender it on the strength of a page like this. Bring the document. Whether keeping it, making it paid up or surrendering it works out better depends on how many years you have paid and what your cover looks like without it.
Next step
Thirty minutes, and no proposal form at the end of it
Bring what you hold already, including anything from an employer. We will size the cover, read the exclusions with you, and tell you plainly if you do not need anything more.