You need life insurance if you want to provide financial protection for your dependents (or to your creditors) in the event of your death. A business may want to use life insurance to fund its employee benefit plans, protect against the premature death of a key person or to provide for business continuation 

 The amount of life insurance a person needs will depend on their own particular circumstances and the reasons for purchasing the policy. One approach to determine how much life insurance you should purchase is to analyze the various needs of your family in the event of the death of a family member.  

 Life insurance may satisfy a number of these needs by providing a fund that can be used to:

• Pay off an individual’s last debts such as medical bills and funeral expenses;
• Meet estate taxes and other expenses in settling an estate;
• Provide life income for the spouse;
• Pay off a mortgage;
• Pay for the children’s education;
• Provide funds for retirement;
• Provide an income for the policyholder’s spouse to give the family time to readjust to a new standard of living;
• Draw interest to provide funds for some special purpose; or
• Provide a monthly income until the children are grown and out of school.
• Thus, the current and future financial needs particular to your family can be a significant consideration in determining the amount of life insurance that is right for you. Another factor that may be taken into consideration in determining how much life insurance you need is the amount of your annual salary.

 While there are many types and variations of life insurance products available in today’s marketplace, there are basically two types of life insurance: term insurance and permanent insurance.

• Term life insurance provides death benefit protection for a certain period of time such as one or ten years. Death benefits are paid to the beneficiary only if the insured dies during that term period. Generally, term policies do not build up any cash values.
• Permanent life insurance can provide death benefit protection for your lifetime and the policy will provide for the build up of a cash value. The cash value may be used in several different ways e.g. you may borrow against the cash value by taking a loan. Permanent insurance includes several different types of policies such as whole life, universal life and variable universal life.

 Whole life insurance and universal life insurance are both types of permanent life insurance; however, universal life has flexible premiums and an adjustable death benefit. Whole life insurance premiums are fixed level and the death benefit is not adjustable. Another difference between these two types of insurance is the cash value of a universal life insurance policy is interest sensitive. If interest rates go up, so will the cash values. A whole life insurance policy’s cash value is not very interest sensitive 

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John Hancock Insurance has introduced ExpressTrack, a new underwriting approach that accelerates the life insurance buying process, letting customers receive an underwriting decision in as little as three days, with no in-person paramedical visits or lab work required. The process was developed internally by John Hancock’s underwriting, medical, product, advanced analytics, and IT teams