Good Pricing, Helpful Agents, and a New Twist on Term Life Insurance
Written: Aug 28 '08
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| mtrenck's Full Review: Prudential - Life |
When my wife and I had our first kid back in July we (among other things) reevaluated our financial needs and our current life insurance. After determining that my wife needed to up her term life insurance we started shopping around online for the best prices and the best options.
About four weeks later we've completed our application process and have received her policy from Prudential. While I certainly hope I'll never have to actually use the policy, I'm definitely confident that we made the right choice with life insurance.
<b>Selecting Prudential - Pricing and Options</b>
Searching through Google we made a list of the various insurance agencies that provided what we wanted. Our biggest requirement was instant online quotes because we didn't want to have to deal with 100's of different sales people. Surfing over towards prudential.com provided us the opportunity to enter basic information about my wife and our insurance needs and a generic monthly premium was generated. For a 30 year $350K policy, Prudential was definitely the cheapest policy we found online.
The one problem with Prudential's website was that it seemed to block us out if we tried to "play" with the numbers... meaning if we tried to generate three or four quotes from the same computer we received an error message saying we should contact an agent.
<b>Meeting an Agent</b>
Once we had settled on a particular plan we thought we were interested in and had gotten hooked by the quoted price we were instructed that we needed to meet with an agent. Although I would have preferred to complete the entire process without meeting an agent, this turned out to actually work in our benefit. We were contacted by an agent the next morning and setup a meeting at our convenience.
Prudential's independant agent met with us at our house. He was very flexible with his schedule and made it clear we could meet anywhere and at anytime that was convenient for us. When he arrived the agent was very professional, knowledgeable, and was able to offer us many options that we didn't even know about.
<b>Prudential's Options</b>
What makes Prudential very unique compared to some other insurance companies are the various options they have. Most of us are probably used to the two basic insurance plans - whole life and term life. Prudential offers a few twists on these plans which makes them a bit more favorable.
One such option is their "Return of Premium" rider which, in a nutshell, returns the total amount we've paid after the policy expires. Think of this as giving Prudential a 0% loan for 30 years. To me, this is a win-win situation for me. God forbid something happens to my wife, my son and I will be financially protected. If we are fortunate enough not to use the policy, we will receive the total amount of what we paid in the year 2038.
<b>Further Application Process</b>
After meeting with the agent and learning about our different options we again settled on a plan that would fit our needs. One plan and price available to us was the exact same as what was quoted online, although we ended up purchasing a different, more expensive policy.
The next step in the process was a phone consult performed by an independant third party and my wife. This took approximately 15 minutes and was completed in the privacy of our home.
Following the phone consultation my wife met with a porta-medic who obtained a blood and urine sample along with height and weight. Once again, completed in our home.
About a week later our agent called us and advised that everything had checked out okay, the plan had been approved and that he would meet with us to deliver the policy. I thought this was a little unusual and wasn't sure why the policy couldn't have just been mailed out.
<b>Final Thoughts</b>
This is our first experience with any of Prudential's products or financial options. We are happy with the pricing and service we have received and highly recommend Prudential to anyone looking into life insurance.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mtrenck
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Reviews written: 92
Trusted by: 1 member
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