Increasing and decreasing life insurance

Hebrews12

My wife and I took out 2 life insurance policies many years ago with Legal and General. I'd pretty much not given it any thought over the years but thought I'd take a look and it seems we have an increasing policy and a decreasing policy  The 'current cover' for both is about the remaining amount on our mortgage give or take a few thousand.  I really don't understand insurance and have had a Google which throws up other things like level insurance as well.  Anyway, can anyone explain in layman's terms what the 2 policies we have are and advise whether we need both please? Thanks.

dunstonh

Anyway, can anyone explain in layman's terms what the 2 policies we have are and advise whether we need both please? 

We would need to know your financial details to ascertain if you need both of them.

However, generically, in most cases, a decreasing term assurance would be used to cover a capital and repayment mortgage or other liabilities/shortfalls that reduce in value over time.

An increasing term assurance would typically be used for family protection to ensure your life assurance has some form of indexation to go with inflation.

So, it would be quite normal to have both or either.     Many people would go decreasing and level as an alternative but increasing instead of level is a belt and braces option.

CSI_Yorkshire

Hebrews12 said:

Anyway, can anyone explain in layman's terms what the 2 policies we have are 

This bit only - I am in no way qualified to give advice.

Decreasing - the amount you get paid if triggered goes down through the life of the policy.  As noted above, often used to cover the remaining mortgage balance (which also gets smaller through time).

Increasing - the amount you get paid if triggered goes up through the life of the policy.  As noted above, used to protect the value against inflation because £50k now is more valuable than £50k in 30 years and the increase offsets that.

Level - the one you have heard about - the amount you get is the same no matter when it triggers.