European residents do not have access to sufficient life insurance

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The reinsurance market giants Swiss Re have announced the results of some recent research which the organisation have undertaken to establish the state of life insurance cover across Europe. According to the results of the new research, the majority of people who reside in Europe do not currently have sufficient life insurance cover to meet their needs.

The results of the study have demonstrated that hundreds of thousands of European residents have no cover at all, despite the fact that the life insurance products available within the European market are priced within acceptable limits that people would be prepared to pay.

Swiss Re’s research focussed upon interviewing over eleven thousand people across Europe. Over half of the respondents involved in the study admitted that they were prepared to pay over EUR 20 a month, to receive EUR 100,000 worth of cover. This amount is twice as expensive as most of the ten year policies available on the European market.

Only eleven percent of the people who were interviewed were adequately covered financially, in the event of death or the onset of long-term critical illness. Over one quarter admitted that they would have to rely upon the services provided by their government, should critical illness cause them to cease working.

Despite the low uptake of life insurance across Europe, almost every single person involved within the research stated that they trusted at least one distribution channel to provide them with a superb life insurance product. Overall, the services of independent financial advisers were considered to be reliable and trustworthy.

Sixty percent of respondents stated that they would be happy to purchase a life insurance product from an IFA, while the services of online price comparison sites and supermarket services fared much lower when it came to being trusted to provide good advice to purchasers. Only ten percent of people stated that they would be happy to purchase insurance through their local supermarket chain, and only forty percent of people trusted online services.