Sunday, May 18, 2008

Health Insurance Types – Cafeteria Plan

A cafeteria plan, also known as Section 125 of regulations of section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code is a separate written plan maintained by an employer, or maintained by a third party called a third party administrators.

It is highly recommended that smaller companies desiring to offer such benefit plans use a TPA (Third Party Administrator) since the administration of such plans is not only intricate but, if mistakes and miss steps are made the fines for non compliance could be astronomical

However the plan is administrated it provides participants/ employees an opportunity to receive certain benefits on a pretax basis. Those who take advantage of a cafeteria plan must be permitted to choose among at least one taxable benefit (such as cash) and one qualified benefit.

We can best explain a "qualified benefit" is a benefit that does not defer compensation and is excludable from an employee's gross income under a specific provision of the Code, without being subject to the principles of constructive receipt. OK. Let me explain farther, Health insurance for the employee can be a "qualified benefit" give to the employee within the employee's compensation but not singled out and taxed. Other insurance products such as accident and health, adoption assistance, dependent care assistance, group-term life insurance coverage to limits and health savings accounts can be considered qualified.

Beware! Archer medical savings accounts or long-term care insurance may not be considered "qualified" and may have to be paid in "post tax" dollars

Every written plan must specifically describe all benefits and establish rules for eligibility and elections. A section 125 plan is the only means by which an employer can offer employees a choice between "taxable" and "nontaxable" benefits without the choice causing the benefits to become taxable. Employer contributions to the cafeteria plan are usually made pursuant to salary reduction agreements between the employer and the employee in which the employee agrees to contribute a portion of his or her salary on a pre-tax basis to pay for the qualified benefits. Let us here hive you an example. The employee is offered a bag of money; let's use $500 per month.

The employee will not be taxed on that money because salary reduction contributions are not actually or constructively received by the participant. From that bag of money an employee may choose a selection of products to purchase, hence "cafeteria"

Cafeteria plans may make benefits available to employees, their spouses and dependents.

In some cases a plan may also allow inclusion coverage of former employees, but cannot exist for that purpose only.

Although generally there is no filing requirement for a cafeteria plan we highly recommend use of a third party administrator to make sure strict compliance is adhered to.

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Bradley Palmer is with Grouphealthflorida.com offering Florida Group Health Insurance. To learn more about group health insurance, visit www.grouphealthflorida.com.

California Life Insurance

The first question you should ask yourself about life insurance is whether or not you really need it. The purpose of life insurance is to provide a source of income, in case of your death, for your spouse, children, dependents, or other beneficiaries. It can also serve other estate planning purposes, such as giving money to charity when you die, paying for estate taxes, paying for funeral and burial costs, or providing for a buy-out of a business interest.

Do I Need Life Insurance?

Whether or not you need to buy life insurance depends on whether anyone is relying on your income. If you have a spouse, child, parent, or some other individual who depends on your income, you probably need life insurance. (You might also need life insurance for estate planning or if you need to make arrangements for your business after you are gone.) Typically, however, if you are single with no dependents, and you don’t own your own business, you probably don’t need life insurance.

Types of Life Insurance

If you determine that you do need life insurance, how do you know what kind of policy is right for you? See our article on Life Insurance: What Types are Available for a discussion on the different kinds of policies one can buy. In general, there are two categories of life insurance:
Term, whereby you pay for coverage for a specified amount of time, and if you die during that time the insurer pays your survivors the death benefit specified;
Cash value — whole life or universal life (or variable life, or universal variable life) —, which, in addition to paying a death benefit, also provides you with some other redeemable value during your lifetime.

Using a Broker

If you know little about buying life insurance, it’s best to use a broker who deals with several companies and who can educate you about the different options available, how the cash values accumulate, and what the policy will cost you over different periods of time. The premium is based on your current age, but may increase over time.

You may also wish to consider purchasing different policies from different companies, particularly if the protection you want exceeds $500,000. Each state has a life insurance guaranty corporation, required by state law, whose purpose is to protect insureds in the event an insurer is unable to pay a claim. There are, however, limits to this protection. These limits are typically $300,000 to $500,000 per insured individual. Policies that exceed that amount are not covered.

Here are some questions to ask of your broker or agent:
How do cash values accumulate? (An early, rapid build-up is generally preferable.)
How has the policy’s cash value performed in the past? You can get this information from a publication called Best Review, Life and Health. Determine how the policy performed in comparison with the company’s projection and with other insurers.
If there are any special features in the policy, do they add value for you, or are they just bells and whistles that you’re paying for but don’t need?
What is the company’s rating with Best, Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s? You can find these publications in public libraries or online. The rankings should be in the top three to ensure that a company has financial stability.
Note that everyone’s situation is different and your needs will not be the same as your neighbor’s even if you have similar lifestyles and family units. To choose the right policy, it is important to give your broker some important pieces of your financial information to help her understand your financial status and your current and future family needs.

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California Insurance Test And License

Common Life insurance terms explained

Everybody knows the importance of buying a life insurance. However before buying one, it is essential for you to know some important life insurance terms. Why? So that you can choose the insurance policy that offers a life insurance protection suitable for you. Understanding these life insurance terms will help you choose the best life insurance cover for you, with the optimum level of ;life insurance protection.

• Beneficiary: Person(s) whose names have been mentioned in the policy to be eligible to get the proceeds of your policy, in case of your death.
• Cash/Surrender Value: The cash amount available for obtaining loans and which can be withdrawn in case of emergencies. If you use this value, your death benefit will reduce death benefit and increase the chance of policy lapse.
• Sum assured: This is the minimum amount guaranteed to the policy owner. It determines the amount you will pay towards premium.
• Premium: This is the amount you to the insurance company in order to enjoy life insurance protection. The amount is decided by your age, type of insurance policy chosen and your health situation. If you are young, healthy and opting for a plain term plan, your premium will lower than if you are older, have some debilitating condition and opting for a unit link insurance plan.
• Endowment policy: A policy that provides life insurance protection as well as an investment avenue. It invests its corpus in debt instrument. The life cover lasts for the term of policy selected.
• Policy term: This is the duration for which you are paying premiums to avail of life insurance protection.
• Term policy: A policy that offers only the life cover without any investment option. Usually, this is the cheapest policy.
• Whole life policy: A policy that offers life insurance protection for as long as you are alive, along with returns on the premiums paid. The corpus is invested in various debt instruments.
• Unit link insurance policy: A policy that provides life insurance protection as well as returns on the premiums paid. This policy can invest across debt, equity or a mixture of both.
• Policy holder: The person on whose name the policy is purchased. It could the person who pays the premiums or another person who has been gifted an insurance policy.
• Paid-up policy: A policy that is in force but without having to pay further premiums.
• With profits policy: A policy in which the insurance company pays the policy holder a share of its profits in form of bonus. This can be either annually or when the policy expires.
• Policy loan: A loan offered by the insurance company to the policy holder from its general funds, by using the policy’s cash value as a security for the loan.

These are some of the common life insurance terms you will find being used by the insurance brokers as well as insurance companies. These terms will definitely help you in short listing the most suitable insurance policy for you.

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You will find more detail information about the Life Insurance Terms on our website www.bharti-axalife.com

Tips for buying a life insurance

Buying a life insurance cover is quite simple process. Yet there are some simple tips you need to adhere to in order to get the best life insurance cover that meets all your requirements. Read on to make your buying of a life insurance a breeze.

• Decide the amount you need to be covered for: This is the most important step in buying a life insurance cover. Find out what is the amount of cover right for you. If your cover is insufficient to meet your present liabilities, your dependents will have a hard time to make their ends meet in case of your death. If you take very high life cover, you will end up paying very high premiums which are a waste of money. So it is advisable to contact an independent life insurance broker who will help you choose the proper cover for you.
• Find out the coverage included in your policy: Certain life insurance policies also provide cover for certain instances like unemployment, disability or critical illness. So if you already have separate insurance policies to cover these instances, you can always exclude them as going for them will increase your premium amount. This can be unnecessary expense.
• Decide on the type of insurance policy you want to go for. If you want the cheapest insurance policy without an element of investment, go for term plan. For insurance and investment for a definite period, choose between endowment, whole life and unit link insurance policies. Due to the absence of investment option, term policy is the cheapest and unit link policy is the costliest.
• Decide how long you want the policy to cover you: Your premium will be decided by the term you want your policy should last. This is very important because as you grow older, your premiums will increase. So if you have decided to take a policy for 15 years, your premium will increase at the time of renewal, as you have grown older. If you want to avoid this situation, opt for a whole life policy so that you are covered till you die.
• Get life insurance quotes: Getting life insurance quotes is very important as different insurers have different premiums for a specific amount insured for a certain period with certain exclusions for a certain age. If you choose to avail of the insurance riders than the life insurance quotes will increase and this increase will not be uniform amongst various insurers. Asking for life insurance quotes can save you a lot of money over the policy term.
• Study various life insurance quotes: After getting various life insurance quotes, go though them minutely. Understand what every policy covers as well as its exclusions. Select few policies that fulfill your need.
• Find out about the quality of customer service of the short listed insurance companies: Quality of the customer service provided by insurance companies will vary a lot. Just because an insurance company is well known, it does not mean its customer service is excellent. You can get a honest feedback about the service of the insurers on different consumer forums, as well as consumer review websites. Here you’ll get an honest appraisal about the customer service of the insurers from actual experiences. It is very important to observe how quickly the company settles the claims, how the company deals with you in case of loss of policy documents and the ultimate surrender value of the policy, in case you cannot keep on paying the premium.

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Here are great pages for life insurance services & Quotes……
Life Insurance Quotes
Buying Life Insurance

Travel Insurance - Adventure Holidays and the Importance Of Being Insured

There are a wide range of extreme sports on a variety of terrains – from snow, surf and even stone.

The added risk factor of activities such as rock climbing, surfing and snowboarding adds to the appeal of these very popular sports.

Every year, thousands of eager adrenaline junkies, young and old, choose to go abroad to partake in such activities. From up north to down under, many head to exotic locations for the experience of a lifetime.

Finding suitable travel insurance before embarking on such trips is a vital part of the planning process. It’s all very well finding the highest peak to base jump from, or the biggest waves to ride – but what happens if something goes wrong?

Injury can be commonplace on an adventure holiday if you don’t take necessary precautions. If something happens and you need to be rescued from say, the side of a mountain, you could find yourself facing a hefty bill at the end of your trip if you don’t have suitable travel insurance.

Depending on the terrain involved, getting injured on an adventure holiday can prove costly if you don’t have sufficient cover, particularly in scenarios which result in you having to be airlifted to hospital (or in some cases back to your home country)

Therefore you need to make sure you take out suitable holiday insurance, and have all bases covered, before you travel.

For adventure holidays it can be worth taking out single trip policies, and it’s always best to ensure that you are covered against a range of factors associated with your activity of choice – such as winter sports cover and ensuring your possessions and passport are covered in case of theft or loss.

Many companies have specialist insurance packages to cater for thrill seekers of all ages and abilities. It can be worth paying that little bit extra to save you all kinds of hassle and financial trouble, meaning you can make the most of your thrill seeking adventures.

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Looking for affordable holiday insurance? Compare a range of travel insurance providers to find a cheap travel insurance deal to suit your holiday.

Basic Facts for Travel Insurance Canada

Traveling may be fun and exciting, but it is not always easy and pleasant. There are times that an unforseen circumstance may interrupt your travel. These unforseen circumstances may make your trip more difficult and may cause some delays resulting in extra expenses to you. These circumstances may include illness during travel, weather related delays, lost or damaged baggage and other valuable items, airline schedule changes or cancelations, and missed connections due to flight delays. To secure your items and yourself in the possibility of these situations, you need to purchase a comprehensive travel insurance policy.

When you are traveling away from Canada, these situations may happen to you. There would be possibilities of illness, loss, delay and cancellation of flight. Nevertheless, the easy part is that there are companies that offer travel insurance for those who travel from Canada. These companies, such as Travel Insurance Quotes offer several plans in travel insurance:

• Emergency travel insurance for Canadian travelers – these policies covers emergency illness for travelers away from Canada. Tourists or visitors do not necessarily have privileges for emergency medical attention. But once you have this particular coverage that you can purchase from Travel Insurance Quotes, you can be entitled to medical care through the coverage of your travel insurance company. This can be purchased in a single trip. But if you are frequently traveling in a year, it is better to purchase the annual, multi trip for fuller protection and lesser cost. In the same way similar plans are available for long term travel or Canadian expatriates. Long term or ‘Expatriate’ medical insurance pays medical expenses when your provincial medical insurance plan do not cover you while away from Canada.
• Medical travel insurance for visitors to Canada – Companies such as Travel Insurance Quotes may also offer Medical coverage ideal for immigrants, foreign workers, international students, and tourists. With visitors medical travel insurance, you are entitled to a medical insurance in case you get sick or ill while in Canada.
• Trip cancellation travel insurance – Coverage that pays your ‘non-refundable’ expenses if you have to cancel your trip due to illness, bad weather, family emergency, airline delays, or work emergency. These plans offered by Travel Insurance Quotes will protect you should you trip be cancelled or cut short due to one of these covered events.
• Comprehensive travel insurance – Plans typically include emergency medical, trip cancellation, trip interruption, lost baggage, accidental death and dismemberment coverage. These plans are all-inclusive travel insurance. You will have complete protection in different cases for your trip away from Canada, may it be long term or short term.

Purchasing the appropriate travel insurance plans that can be acquired from Travel Insurance Quotes, will assure you have “peace of mind” against unforeseen events on your travel. Make sure you are adequately covered whether you are a Canadian traveler, Canadian expatriate, international student, foreign worker, tourist visiting Canada, or new immigrant to Canada.

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To get intant quotes and purchase the various plans, you need to visit a reliable travel insurance company such as Travel Insurance Quotes who specializes in travel insurance. Get travel insurance packages from the reliable Travel Insurance Quotes.

Travel Insurance – Prices Drop as Competition Rises

It’s always great to hear about price drops and holidaymakers will be especially pleased to hear that the cost of travel insurance has dropped significantly.

The reason for this recent drop is due to the increased amount of competition between travel insurance providers. A study has shown that overseas trips rose by more than 17 per cent between 2002 and 2006. The study also shows that there is evidence Brits are travelling to more distant places for their holidays.

The research looked into different travel insurance policies in an attempt to assess any premium changes that had been made since 2002. It was discovered that the only rise was on annual travel insurance taken out for trips to the USA.

The author of the report said that with the amount of cheap travel insurance policies that are available on the internet, other policy providers have been forced to lower their costs.

However, the study also showed that one in seven holidaymakers still go on their holidays without any insurance. The author of the report says that there is no excuse for people to travel uninsured as single trip insurance can be bought for just £6 for a week’s holiday.

American Express Insurance Services also researched the issues surrounding travel insurance and found that there was a real need for it as there are many people using their laptops and Blackberries around the pool.

The company said that holidaymakers need to make sure that their insurance policies cover them for any devices they take to the pool with them in case they were to get splashed and ruined.

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There are so many cheap travel insurance policies on the internet that other companies have had to cut the cost of their policies. American Express Insurance Services have found that there is a real need for travel insurance as many people are taking their laptops and Blackberries around the pool. The company have said that holidaymakers need to make sure that their insurance policies cover them for any devices that they may take to the pool with them in case they were to get splashed and ruined.

Find Cheap Travel Insurance

You want to take plenty of precautions in planning out your vacations to make sure every aspect has been considered. Everything is to be fit into an itinerary beforehand so that when the vacation time comes you can focus on fully enjoying your vacation.

But, no matter how much you plan, the unexpected can always happen during your vacation. When you travel far away it is hard to deal with such things as natural disasters, robberies, accidents, and severe illnesses. Fortunately, with proper planning you can find cheap travel insurance policies that can help you to overcome many of these unexpected incidents as they strike. So make sure that you find cheap travel insurance plans that will provide you with plenty of coverage.

One-Time Trips

If you just go on one trip per year or less you can just purchase a one-trip travel insurance policy. You have a lot of insurance policy options available to you regardless of how often you go on vacation. There are so many options of insurance policies out there if you go on vacation often that it may become confusing to sort through all of these options and pick out a policy.

Annual Travel Insurance Policies

If you travel regularly during the course of a year you will get a big cost savings by purchasing an annual insurance plan. Be careful to read the fine print on this type of insurance policy because you're stuck with it a long time. It may not include certain types of travel or long-term travel. In some cases you may not be covered during the holiday season.

Family Travel Insurance Policies

If you travel with several members of the family you can purchase a cheap family policy. You get a discount for the whole group over what you would pay insuring each family member one by one. The amount of your premiums can vary quite a bit by the amount of coverage you choose to get for your family. Some will charge a flat family premium rate and some will charge a flat rate plus an additional amount per family member covered by the insurance policy.

Business Travel Insurance

If you travel frequently on business trips you can find cheap travel insurance policy specially designed for this type of travel. This is usually a good deal for business travelers. In some cases if something comes up to prevent you from taking a given trip your company may be able to substitute another employee in your place without having to pay any additional change of flight fees that would normally be charged to passengers.

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Learn more about the facts on finding cheapest travel insurance policies and get more information about international travel insurance plans.