Are you looking to get life insurance as fast as possible and, preferably, without having to meet or talk to someone?
We tend to only think about life insurance during key milestones in our life – when we get married, have kids, buy a house, or lose a loved one.
Other times, that milestone is being fired or furloughed causing you to lose your group life insurance policy through your employer.
If you recently experienced a big change, it might be time to think about life insurance.
Years ago, it was nearly impossible to get life insurance fast, much less online. You'd have to call a few companies, probably talk to a broker, meet with insurance agents, get a medical exam, and then wait as the insurance underwriters analyzed your risks and issued, or declined to issue, a policy.
Today, you can do it online and if you are someone considered low-risk, they'll issue a smaller life insurance policy quickly.
If you qualify, you can get an insurance policy issued in minutes rather than the more traditional waiting period of weeks.
While there are two major types of life insurance, term and whole, this article only covers term life insurance. If you want to know the difference, read this article on term vs. whole life insurance.
Best Fast Life Insurance Options
Below are the best fast term life insurance companies we've reviewed, in no particular order. Read on to discover the right one for you.
| Company | Strongest In | A.M. Best Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric | 10-30 yr term, $100k-$5mm | A+ |
| Ladder | 10-30yr term, flexible coverage, no medical exams up to $3mm | A+ |
| Everyday Life | Flexible coverage | N/A |
In the above table, the A.M. Best rating is for the primary insurance company that underwrites the company's policies.
For context, A.M. Best is a ratings company that has 15 categories for its ratings. They issue them based on the insurance company's financial strength, operating performance, and ability to meet obligations to its policyholders. The highest categories are A++ and A+ – anything above a B+ is considered a secure rating. Anything B and below is considered “vulnerable.” We don't list anyone below an A. You want to avoid what happens when an insurance company goes out of business.
Fabric
Fabric will issue 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, and 30-year term life insurance policies with coverage starting at $100,000 up to $5,000,000 – all online. The online application process takes approximately ten minutes and if you qualify, they will issue a policy there.
Fabric issues policies from Western-Southern Life Assurance Company.
What separates Fabric, besides their coverage up to $5,000,000, is that they offer help in a variety of other estate planning areas like creating a will and organizing your financial and legal information through their custom tools. If you don't have any estate planning done, it's an easy way to organize and get things started.
Get a free estimate from Fabric
Ladder
Ladder is faster than traditional insurers as they offer a fully digital term life insurance application process. Ladder’s agents are salaried so there is no incentive for them to sell you a product. They offer term life policies of 10 to 30 years and there are no medical exams for coverage up to $3M.
The appeal of Ladder is that the policies they offer allow you to decrease or apply to increase your coverage. This can be useful in cases where you know your needs will change in the future (this is how much life insurance you need). If they may go up, apply to add more coverage. If they go down, decrease your coverage in a matter of clicks with Ladder. You could do this with other companies, by getting additional policies or letting your existing one lapse, but Ladder makes it easier. We did a review of Ladder that goes into much greater detail.
Ladder offers term life insurance products issued by multiple highly rated insurers.
Everyday Life
Everyday Life claims that you can fill out the application and receive a response within two minutes. Plus, they don’t require a medical exam, which can really accelerate the entire process.
Everyday Life works with multiple companies as a broker – they don’t offer policies directly. This means that you may have to answer more questions from the company you accept.
The average monthly premium for a policy is $15, but premiums can run as low as $4 per month. The exact price will depend on your age, health rating, policy amount, and term length. Everyday Life says that most individuals can get approved immediately for a policy. If this doesn’t happen for you, don’t worry. You may just have to answer a few more questions before getting approved.
What makes Everyday Life stand out is that they have a Predictive Protection model that shows exactly how much life insurance you need at any given point in your life. When you need less coverage, Everyday Life will downgrade your policy so you can potentially save on monthly premiums.
Here's our full review of Everyday Life.
Get a free quote from Everyday Life
✨Related: Largest Life Insurance Companies in the U.S.
Common Questions about Life Insurance
There are a few things to be aware of whenever shopping for insurance, especially when it's entirely online and without a medical exam:
The goal of life insurance is to protect your beneficiaries if you die unexpectedly. If you are single without a family, life insurance isn't a priority. If you die, you have no beneficiaries. There's no one left on the hook for your debts. If you have a mortgage and the bank forecloses, it doesn't matter because no one else is living there.
If you're married with two kids and a mortgage, your death will have an impact on your family's finances. If you're the sole or primary earner in the household, it will have a significant impact because your family loses your income but still has all of its expenses. If the bank forecloses on your house, your family must move. The role of life insurance is to reduce some of the burdens of your death.
How much do you need? That depends on your specific finances but experts generally recommend you get enough to cover your financial obligations. This includes your debts, such as a mortgage or car note, but also what you may need to raise children or care for pets. This will depend on your total financial picture (life insurance isn't free!) but the idea here is to have something so your beneficiaries aren't left with both an emotional hole as well as a financial one.
In these unprecedented times, this is an important question and if you have a traditional life insurance policy then it is typically covered. There is nothing specific about the virus that would disqualify or invalidate a policy.
Other factors could impact a life insurance policy, such as if you fail to pay the premium or you did not submit an accurate application (and it's still in the contestable period, more on that below), but nothing specific to COVID-19 or Coronavirus would be excluded.
Here is our broader resource page for Coronavirus relief information and resources.
Every life insurance policy has a “waiting period,” legally referred to as a contestable period. In the first two years of a policy (typically), an insurance company can void coverage because of a misstatement by the insured. An entirely online process can be fast but you need to be very careful because if you lie on the application, your policy could be invalidated during this period. This is why it's important to disclose everything you know about yourself and not fudge any numbers!
After the waiting period, the “incontestability clause” kicks in. It's a simple clause that says the policy is incontestable after this waiting period.
Back in the day, insurance companies treated everyone the same. If you were 20-years-old and healthy, you went through the same process as someone who was 40-years-old and not nearly as healthy. That process included phone calls, forms, the postal service, and other steps that were slow. And everyone did the same process.
Today, you can do it online and if you are someone considered low-risk, they'll issue a smaller life insurance policy quickly.
For example, Bestow is willing to issue a policy of up to $1,000,000 and a term of up to 20-years entirely online without a medical exam. You won't need to be in perfect health to be approved. That's far faster than the old way of weeks and many of these companies are just the online face of an older insurance company that's been in business for decades. In Bestow's case, they are themselves a licensed agent and provide policies by North American Company for Life and Health Insurance, a company founded in 1886.
In the past, no medical exam life insurance was typically reserved for folks who were risky to insure. If you had an underlying health condition that would preclude you from getting life insurance, you'd have to go with a no medical exam policy. These policies were more expensive because insurers knew there was a reason why you didn't want a medical exam. They didn't know exactly why but they knew it was because you were a higher risk.
These days, the no medical exam aspect of the above offerings was to help streamline the process, not avoid the exam itself. That said, the “fast” part of the offer is still a benefit and it's important to understand that it has costs. A company willing to issue you a policy without a medical exam and using just your word is taking on more risk – that means they may want higher premiums.
Since every insurance policy is different, I recommend getting several quotes just to make sure you aren't overpaying simply because one company's actuaries calculate your risks differently. It always pays to shop around – plus the quotes are free so it'll only cost you time. Here's the average cost of life insurance so you'll have an idea of what to expect.
