Life & Health
Mortgage protection insurance
Coverage sized to pay off the house if you die before it's paid for — structured so the money goes to your family, not straight to the lender.
Start with what usually gets sold
If you've closed on a house in the last few years you have received the letters. Official-looking envelopes referencing your lender by name and your loan amount, offering "mortgage protection." Most of what those sell is decreasing term — coverage that shrinks every year as your balance drops, at a premium that doesn't.
Some of them name the lender as beneficiary. That means the money never touches your family. It pays the bank, the house is clear, and your spouse is left with a paid-off house and no income.
What we do instead
Level term, owned by you, payable to your family. The death benefit doesn't shrink. Your beneficiary decides what to do with it.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. If your spouse would rather pay off the house, she can. If she'd rather keep the low-rate mortgage and use the money for income, tuition, or to keep a business running for a year — she can do that too. A decreasing policy naming the bank makes that decision for her, in advance, permanently.
Level term also usually costs less than what those letters quote.
Sizing it correctly
Most people insure the loan balance and stop. The mortgage is rarely the actual problem.
Consider the balance, yes — plus taxes and insurance, which don't go away when the note is paid. Plus whatever income the household loses. Plus the years until the youngest child is out of the house. That's the real number, and it's usually meaningfully higher than the payoff figure on your statement.
If that number feels large, that's what term insurance is for. A healthy thirty-five-year-old can often cover it for less than a phone bill.
If you were declined or rated
Health issues, a private pilot's license, a dangerous occupation — these change which carrier you should be with, not whether you can get covered. Independent means we can move you to one that underwrites your situation favorably instead of defending the one who declined you.
We also write term life and whole life, and for owners with a note personally guaranteed against the business, the Owner's Table is the more complete conversation.
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Coverage sized to pay off the house if you die before it's paid for — structured so the money goes to your family, not straight to the lender.
Request a quote