Women need insurance, too

Let’s face it. Everybody needs insurance.

In its purest form, life insurance is a risk-management tool that provides financial protection to one’s family against unforeseen events. In its current avatar, though, it has come to mean a basket of solutions for diverse needs, including savings, investment, health, pension and combinations thereof. So much so, it has come to be viewed as an integral part of financial planning.

However, the off-take of insurance by women has not been encouraging so far. This, despite the fact that an increasing number of them today share the responsibilities as part of working couples, and even provide for entire households on their own. It is imperative that a woman ask herself three simple questions: Do

I need a financial plan to ensure my family maintains its lifestyle in my absence? Do I need to make provisions for income in old age? Do I need to provide for health-related expenses? If the answer is in the affirmative, she needs insurance.

The kind of insurance plan one needs, however, will depend on a number of factors. Every woman is different and has her individual needs and aspirations.

Along with these, the type of plan one chooses will depend on the stage of life she is in.



Generally speaking, being a long-term investment, an insurance plan not only provides a life cover but also helps build a corpus to achieve financial goals and maintain the present standard of living in future.

At each stage of your life, you would have a core financial need and what you would like for the future, for your own self and for your loved ones.

If you are a working woman and part of a two-income family, your need to protect your share of the family income and to provide for your family is as important as that of any earning member of a household. If you are a single working woman and the financial head of the household, you are likely to have major financial responsibilities and risk protection is critical.

For example, 38-year-old Geeta Kapoor, working for an IT company at a senior level, heads her household and has 2 dependants. She wants to retire from her job when she turns 55. Thus, she needs to protect her loved ones from any unanticipated incident as well as create a corpus that will provide her income post retirement.

Hence, she should buy a term product as well as a pension plan that enforces the discipline of saving to give her a regular income when she stops working. A health plan will also help her pay for the hospitalisation and other treatment expenses in case she or her dependants are diagnosed with a critical illness.

This would ensure that her long-term goals are unaltered.

In other words, the type of insurance you need is related to the financial implications your loss of income can have on your loved ones. At the same time, everyone needs to make provisions for regular income in old age to cover living as well as health-related expenses.

Women have a higher life expectancy compared with men and hence will need income for more years. Women’s working life also tends to be more unpredictable than those of their male counterparts — whether it involves giving up work altogether or taking a temporary break or working part-time.

Given all this, it is imperative that they have a good financial plan in place and are adequately covered against uncertainties through a mix of savings, investment and insurance.

Source: DNA Money