Definition of Term life insurance

Term life insurance

A contract that provides a death benefit but no cash build-up or investment component.
The premium remains constant only for a specified term of years, and the policy is usually renewable at the
end of each term.

Term Life Insurance

A plan of insurance which covers the insured for only a certain period of time and not necessarily for his or her entire life. The policy pays a death benefit only if the insured dies during the term.

Conversion Right

term life insurance products are offered as non-convertible or convertible to a certain time in the future. The coversion right has a time limit, usually to the policy holder's age 60 or possibly even age 70. This right means that the policy holder has the right to convert their existing policy to another specific different plan of permanent insurance within the specified time period, without providing evidence of insurability. There is a slightly higher cost for a term policy with the conversion priviledge but it is a valuable feature should a policy holder's health change for the worst and continued insurance coverage becomes a necessity.
Most often this right is also granted to individuals covered under employee group benefit policies where individuals leaving the employee group have a limited amount of time, usually anywhere from 30 to 90 days, to convert to a specific permanent individual policy without evidence of insurability.

Mortgage Insurance

Commonly sold in the form of reducing term life insurance by lending institutions, this is life insurance with a death benefit reducing to zero over a specific period of time, usually 20 to 25 years. In most instances, the cost of coverage remains level, while the death benefit continues to decline. Re-stated, the cost of this kind of insurance is actually increasing since less death benefit is paid as the outstanding mortgage balance decreases while the cost remains the same. Lending institutions are the most popular sources for this kind of coverage because it is usually sold during the purchase of a new mortgage. The untrained institution mortgage sales person often gives the impression that this is the only place mortgage insurance can be purchased but it is more efficiently purchased at a lower cost and with more flexibility, directly from traditional life insurance companies. No matter where it is purchased, the reducing term insurance death benefit reduces over a set period of years. Most consumers are up-sizing their residences, not down-sizing, so it is likely that more coverage is required as years pass, rather than less coverage.
The cost of mortgage lender's insurance group coverage is based on a blended non-smoker/smoker rate, not having any advantage to either male or female. Mortgage lender's group insurance certificate specifies that it [the lender] is the sole beneficiary entitled to receive the death benefit. Mortgage lender's group insurance is not portable and is not guaranteed. Generally speaking, your coverage is void if you do not occupy the house for a period of time, rent the home, fall into arrears on the mortgage, and there are a few others which vary by institution. If, for example, you sell your home and buy another, your current mortgage insurance coverage ends and you will have to qualify for new coverage when you purchase your next home. Maybe you won't be able to qualify. Not being guaranteed means that it is possible for the lending institution's group insurance carrier to cancel all policy holder's coverages if they are experiencing too many death benefit claims.
Mortgage insurance purchased from a life insurance company, is priced, based on gender, smoking status, health and lifestyle of the purchaser. Once obtained, it is a unilateral contract in your favour, which cannot be cancelled by the insurance company unless you say so or unless you stop paying for it. It pays upon the death of the life insured to any "named beneficiary" you choose, tax free. If, instead of reducing term life insurance, you have purchased enough level or increasing life insurance coverage based on your projection of future need, you can buy as many new homes in the future as you want and you won't have to worry about coverage you might loose by renewing or increasing your mortgage.
It is worth mentioning mortgage creditor protection insurance since it is many times mistakenly referred to simply as mortgage insurance. If a home buyer has a limited amount of down payment towards a substantial home purchase price, he/she may qualify for a high ratio mortgage on a home purchase if a lump sum fee is paid for mortgage creditor protection insurance. The only Canadian mortgage lenders currently known to offer this option through the distribution system of banks and trust companies, are General Electric Capital [GE Capital] and Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation [CMHC]. The lump sum fee is mandatory when the mortgage is more than 75% of the value of the property being purchased. The lump sum fee is usually added onto the mortgage. It's important to realize that the only beneficiary of this type of coverage is the morgage lender, which is the bank or trust company through which the buyer arranged their mortgage. If the buyer for some reason defaults on this kind of high ratio mortgage and the value of the property has dropped since being purchased, the mortgage creditor protection insurance makes certain that the bank or trust company gets paid. However, this is not the end of the story, because whatever the difference is, between the disposition value of the property and whatever sum of unpaid mortgage money is outstanding to either GE Capital or CMHC will be the subject of collection procedures against the defaulting home buyer. Therefore, one should conclude that this kind of insurance offers protection only to the bank or trust company and absolutely no protection to the home buyer.

Yearly Renewable Term Insurance

Sometimes, simply called YRT, this is a form of term life insurance that may be renewed annually without evidence of insurability to a stated age.

Life Insurance (Credit Insurance)

Group term life insurance that pays or reduces the balance due on a loan if the borrower dies before the loan is repaid.

Mortgage Life insurance (Credit Insurance)

Decreasing term life insurance that provides a death benefit amount corresponding to the decreasing amount owed on a mortgage.

Average life

Also referred to as the weighted-average life (WAL). The average number of years that each
dollar of unpaid principal due on the mortgage remains outstanding. Average life is computed as the weighted average time to the receipt of all future cash flows, using as the weights the dollar amounts of the principal
paydowns.

Coefficient of determination

A measure of the goodness of fit of the relationship between the dependent and
independent variables in a regression analysis; for instance, the percentage of variation in the return of an
asset explained by the market portfolio return.

Coinsurance effect

Refers to the fact that the merger of two firms decreases the probability of default on
either firm's debt.

Deferred nominal life annuity

A monthly fixed-dollar payment beginning at retirement age. It is nominal
because the payment is fixed in dollar amount at any particular time, up to and including retirement.

Deterministic models

Liability-matching models that assume that the liability payments and the asset cash
flows are known with certainty. Related: Compare stochastic models

Disintermediation

Withdrawal of funds from a financial institution in order to invest them directly.

Euro-medium term note (Euro-MTN)

A non-underwritten Euronote issued directly to the market. Euro-
MTNs are offered continuously rather than all at once as a bond issue is. Most Euro-MTN maturities are
under five years.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

A federal institution that insures bank deposits.

Financial intermediaries

Institutions that provide the market function of matching borrowers and lenders or
traders.

Guaranteed insurance contract

A contract promising a stated nominal interest rate over some specific time
period, usually several years.

Insurance principle

The law of averages. The average outcome for many independent trials of an experiment
will approach the expected value of the experiment.

Intermarket sector

spread The spread between the interest rate offered in two sectors of the bond market for
issues of the same maturity.

Intermarket spread swaps

An exchange of one bond for another based on the manager's projection of a
realignment of spreads between sectors of the bond market.

Intermediate-term

Typically 1-10 years.

Intermediation

Investment through a financial institution. Related: disintermediation.

Liquidity theory of the term structure

A biased expectations theory that asserts that the implied forward
rates will not be a pure estimate of the market's expectations of future interest rates because they embody a
liquidity premium.

Long-term

In accounting information, one year or greater.

Long-term assets

Value of property, equipment and other capital assets minus the depreciation. This is an
entry in the bookkeeping records of a company, usually on a "cost" basis and thus does not necessarily reflect
the market value of the assets.

Long-term debt

An obligation having a maturity of more than one year from the date it was issued. Also
called funded debt.

Long-term debt/capitalization

Indicator of financial leverage. Shows long-term debt as a proportion of the
capital available. Determined by dividing long-term debt by the sum of long-term debt, preferred stock and
common stockholder equity.

Long-term debt ratio

The ratio of long-term debt to total capitalization.

Long-term financial plan

Financial plan covering two or more years of future operations.

Long-term liabilities

Amount owed for leases, bond repayment and other items due after 1 year.

Long-term debt to equity ratio

A capitalization ratio comparing long-term debt to shareholders' equity.

Medium-term note

A corporate debt instrument that is continuously offered to investors over a period of
time by an agent of the issuer. Investors can select from the following maturity bands: 9 months to 1 year,
more than 1 year to 18 months, more than 18 months to 2 years, etc., up to 30 years.

Other long term liabilities

Value of leases, future employee benefits, deferred taxes and other obligations
not requiring interest payments that must be paid over a period of more than 1 year.

Portfolio insurance

A strategy using a leveraged portfolio in the underlying stock to create a synthetic put
option. The strategy's goal is to ensure that the value of the portfolio does not fall below a certain level.

Short-term financial plan

A financial plan that covers the coming fiscal year.

Short-term investment services

Services that assist firms in making short-term investments.

Short-term solvency ratios

Ratios used to judge the adequacy of liquid assets for meeting short-term
obligations as they come due, including
1) the current ratio,
2) the acid-test ratio,
3) the inventory turnover ratio, and
4) the accounts receivable turnover ratio.

Short-term tax exempts

Short-term securities issued by states, municipalities, local housing agencies, and
urban renewal agencies.

Term bonds

Often referred to as bullet-maturity bonds or simply bullet bonds, bonds whose principal is
payable at maturity. Related: serial bonds

Term Fed Funds

Fed Funds sold for a period of time longer than overnight.

Term loan

A bank loan, typically with a floating interest rate, for a specified amount that matures in between
one and ten years and requires a specified repayment schedule.

Term insurance

Provides a death benefit only, no build-up of cash value.

Term repo

A repurchase agreement with a term of more than one day.
term structure of interest rates
Relationship between interest rates on bonds of different maturities usually
depicted in the form of a graph often depicted as a yield curve. Harvey shows that inverted term structures
(long rates below short rates) have preceded every recession over the past 30 years.

Term to maturity

The time remaining on a bond's life, or the date on which the debt will cease to exist and
the borrower will have completely paid off the amount borrowed. See: Maturity.

Term premiums

Excess of the yields to maturity on long-term bonds over those of short-term bonds.

Term trust

A closed-end fund that has a fixed termination or maturity date.

Terminal value

The value of a bond at maturity, typically its par value, or the value of an asset (or an entire
firm) on some specified future valuation date.

Terms of sale

Conditions on which a firm proposes to sell its goods services for cash or credit.

Terms of trade

The weighted average of a nation's export prices relative to its import prices.

Universal life

A whole life insurance product whose investment component pays a competitive interest rate
rather than the below-market crediting rate.

Variable life insurance policy

A whole life insurance policy that provides a death benefit dependent on the
insured's portfolio market value at the time of death. Typically the company invests premiums in common
stocks, and hence variable life policies are referred to as equity-linked policies.

Weighted average life

See:Average life.

Whole life insurance

A contract with both insurance and investment components: (1) It pays off a stated
amount upon the death of the insured, and (2) it accumulates a cash value that the policyholder can redeem or
borrow against.

LONG-TERM LIABILITIES

Bills that are payable in more than one year, such as a mortgage or bonds.

Lifecycle costing

An approach to costing that estimates and accumulates the costs of a product/service over
its entire lifecycle, i.e. from inception to abandonment.

Long-term liabilities

Amounts owing after more than one year.

coefficient of determination

a measure of dispersion that
indicates the “goodness of fit” of the actual observations
to the least squares regression line; indicates what proportion
of the total variation in y is explained by the regression model

life cycle costing

the accumulation of costs for activities that
occur over the entire life cycle of a product from inception
to abandonment by the manufacturer and consumer

predetermined overhead rate

an estimated constant charge per unit of activity used to assign overhead cost to production or services of the period; it is calculated by dividing total budgeted annual overhead at a selected level of volume or activity by that selected measure of volume or activity; it is also the standard overhead application rate

product life cycle

a model depicting the stages through
which a product class (not necessarily each product) passes

Term structure

The relationship between the yields on fixed-interest
securities and their maturity dates. Expectation of changes in interest rates
affects term structure, as do liquidity preferences and hedging pressure. A
yield curve is one representation in the term structure.

Economic life

The period over which a company expects to be able to use an asset.

Long-term debt

A debt for which payments will be required for a period of more than
one year into the future.

Useful life

The estimated life span of a fixed asset, during which it can be expected to
contribute to company operations.

financial intermediary

Firm that raises money from many small investors and provides financing to businesses or other
organizations by investing in their securities.

terms of sale

Credit, discount, and payment terms offered on a sale.

Financial Intermediary

Any institution, such as a bank, that takes deposits from savers and loans them to borrowers.

Financial Intermediation

The process whereby financial intermediaries channel funds from lender/savers to borrower/spenders.

Intermediate Good

A good used in producing another good.

Term

See term to maturity.

Term Deposit

An interest-earning bank deposit that cannot be withdrawn without penalty until a specific time.

Term to Maturity

Period of time from the present to the redemption date of a bond.

Term Structure of Interest Rates

Relationship among interest rates on bonds with different terms to maturity.

Terms of Trade

The quantity of imports that can be obtained for a unit of exports, measured by the ratio of an export price index to an import price index.

Unemployment Insurance

A program in which workers and firms pay contributions and workers collect benefits if they become unemployed.

Federal Insurance Contributions Act of 1935 (FICA)

A federal Act authorizing the government to collect Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)

A federal Act expanding upon many of the insurance reforms created by
COBRA. In particular, it ensures that small businesses will have access to
health insurance, despite the special health status of any employees.

Termination Pay

Additional pay due to an employee whose employment is
being terminated, usually in accordance with a termination pay schedule contained
within the employee manual.

Shelf life

The time period during which inventory can be retained in stock and beyond
which it becomes unusable.

Shelf life control

Deliberate usage of the oldest items first, in order to avoid exceeding
a component or product’s shelf life.

Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation

Better known as CDIC, this is an organization which insures qualifying deposits and GICs at savings institutions, mainly banks and trust companys, which belong to the CDIC for amounts up to $60,000 and for terms of up to five years. Many types of deposits are not insured, such as mortgage-backed deposits, annuities of duration of more than five years, and mutual funds.

Co-insurance

In medical insurance, the insured person and the insurer sometimes share the cost of services under a policy in a specified ratio, for example 80% by the insurer and 20% by the insured. By this means, the cost of coverage to the insured is reduced.

Dead Peasants Insurance

Also known as "Dead Janitors insurance", this is the practice, where allowed, in several U.S. states, of numerous well known large American Corporations taking out corporate owned life insurance policies on millions of their regular employees, often without the knowledge or consent of those employees. Corporations profiting from the deaths of their employees [and sometimes ex-employees] have attracted adverse publicity because ultimate death benefits are seldom, even partially passed down to surviving families.

Disability Insurance

insurance that pays you an ongoing income if you become disabled and are unable to pursue employment or business activities. There are limits to how much you can receive based on your pre-disability earnings. Rates will vary based on occupational duties and length of time in a particular industry. This kind of coverage has a waiting period before you can begin collecting benefits, usually 30, 60 or 90 days. The benefit paying period also varies from 2 years to age 65. A short waiting period will cost more that a longer waiting period. As well, a long benefit paying period will cost more than a short benefit paying period.

Errors and Omissions Insurance

insurance coverage purchased by the agent/broker which provides protection against loss incurred by a client because of some negligent act, error, oversight, or omission by the agent/broker.

Group Life Insurance

This is a very common form of life insurance which is found in employee benefit plans and bank mortgage insurance. In employee benefit plans the form of this insurance is usually one year renewable term insurance. The cost of this coverage is based on the average age of everyone in the group. Therefore a group of young people would have inexpensive rates and an older group would have more expensive rates.
Some people rely on this kind of insurance as their primary coverage forgetting that group life insurance is a condition of employment with their employer. The coverage is not portable and cannot be taken with you if you change jobs. If you have a change in health, you may not qualify for new coverage at your new place of employment.
Bank mortgage insurance is also usually group insurance and you can tell this by virtue of the fact that you only receive a certificate of insurance, and not a complete policy. The only form in which bank mortgage insurance is sold is reducing term insurance, matching the declining mortgage balance. The only beneficiary that can be chosen for this kind of insurance is the bank. In both cases, employee benefit plan group insurance and bank mortgage insurance, the coverage is not guaranteed. This means that coverage can be cancelled by the insurance company underwriting that particular plan, if they are experiencing excessive claims.

Level Premium Life Insurance

This is a type of insurance for which the cost is distributed evenly over the premium payment period. The premium remains the same from year to year and is more than actual cost of protection in the earlier years of the policy and less than the actual cost of protection in the later years. The excess paid in the early years builds up a reserve to cover the higher cost in the later years.

Life Expectancy

The average number of years of life remaining for a group of people of a given age and gender according to a particular mortality table.

Life Income Fund

Commonly known as a LIF, this is one of the options available to locked in Registered Pension Plan (RPP) holders for income payout as opposed to Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) holders choice of payout through Registered Retirement Income Funds (RRIF). A LIF must be converted to a unisex annuity by the time the holder reaches age 80.

Split Dollar Life Insurance

The split dollar concept is usually associated with cash value life insurance where there is a death benefit and an accumulation of cash value. The basic premise is the sharing of the costs and benefits of a life insurance policy by two or more parties. Usually one party owns and pays for the insurance protection and the other owns and pays for the cash accumulation. There is no single way to structure a split dollar arrangement. The possible structures are limited only by the imagination of the parties involved.

Temporary Life Insurance

Temporary insurance coverage is available at time of application for a life insurance policy if certain conditions are met. Normally, temporary coverage relates to free coverage while the insurance company which is underwriting the risk, goes through the process of deciding whether or not they will grant a contract of coverage. The qualifications for temporary coverage vary from insurance company to insurance company but generally applicants will qualify if they are between the ages of 18 and 65, have no knowledge or suspicions of ill health, have not been absent from work for more than 7 days within the prior 6 months because of sickness or injury and total coverage applied for from all sources does not exceed $500,000. Normally a cheque covering a minimum of one months premium is required to complete the conditions for this kind of coverage. The insurance company applies this deposit towards the cost of a policy at its issue date, which may be several weeks in the future.

Credit Terms

Conditions under which credit is extended by a lender to a borrower.

Export Credit Insurance

The granting of insurance to cover the commercial and political risks of selling in foreign markets.

Flexible Term

Optional periods of time which the conditions of a contract will be carried out.

Insurance Company

A firm licensed to sell insurance to the public.

Intermediary

An independent third party that may act as a mediator during negotiations.

Long Term Debt

Liability due in a year or more.

Longer-Term Fixed Assets

Assets having a useful life greater than one year but the duration of the 'long term' will vary with the context in which the term is applied.

Repayment Terms

The length of time given a borrower by a lender to repay a debt and the frequency of principal payments which the borrower has to meet.

Term

This is usually the duration of a loan.

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