Definition of "Group life insurance"

Basic employee benefit under which an employer buys a master policy and issues certificates to employees denoting participation in the plan. Group life is also available through unions and associations. It is usually issued as yearly renewable term insurance, although some plans provide permanent insurance. Employers may pay all the cost or share it with employees. Characteristics include:

  1. Group Underwriting an entire group of employees is underwritten, unlike individual life insurance where under only the individual is underwritten.
  2. Guaranteed Issue every employee must be accepted; an employee cannot be denied coverage because of a pre-existing illness, sickness, or injury.
  3. Conversion at Termination of Employment regardless of whether termination is because of severance, disability, or retirement, the employee has the automatic right to convert to an individual life policy without evidence of insurability or taking a physical examination. Conversion must be within 30 days of termination. The premium upon conversion is based on the employee's age at the time (ATTAINED AGE).
  4. DISABILITY BENEFIT available in many policies to an employee less than 60 years of age who can no longer work because of the disability. The benefit takes the form of waiver of premium, and the employee is covered for as long as the disability continues. The beneficiary will receive the death benefit even though the employee may not have been in the service of the employer for a long time.
  5. DEATH BENEFIT Structure or Schedule is usually based on an employee's earnings. The benefit is a multiple of the employee's earnings, normally 1 to 2 1/2 times the employee's yearly earnings.
In many companies, if the employee dies while on company business, 6 times the yearly earnings are paid as a death benefit. For example, a $50,000 a year employee dies in an accident while traveling on company time; the beneficiary would receive $300,000. But if the same employee dies in his sleep at home, the beneficiary would receive $100,000 (assuming that the normal death benefit is twice annual earnings).

image of a real estate dictionary page

Have a question or comment?

We're here to help.

*** Your email address will remain confidential.
 

 

Popular Insurance Terms

Individual to whom rights to a benefit are assigned. A life insurance policy is assigned by the collateral borrower (assignor) to the collateral creditor (assignee) as security for a loan. ...

Facilities for senior adults who pay an entrance fee to move into the facility as well as a monthly fee. The adults receive, in return, a place to live and long-term care usually for the ...

Liability insurance that extends beyond the end of the policy period of a liability insurance policy written on a claims-made basis. Liability claims are often made long after the accident ...

Percentage of total assets set aside by an insurance company to provide for unexpected losses. In general, a minimum of a 5% surplus ratio (5 cents in reserve for each $1 of assets) is ...

Right of a certificate holder to convert group life or group health insurance to an individual policy without a physical examination to furnish evidence of insurability. Usually this must ...

Statement regarding an insured's retention of low-severity risks because they are not catastrophic, and can be absorbed without having a dramatic effect on the financial structure of a ...

Several basic property and/or liability policies combined to form a single policy. For example, the homeowners insurance policy is composed of such basic coverages as broad form personal ...

Same as term Binder: temporary insurance contract providing coverage until a permanent policy is issued. In property and casualty insurance, some agents have authority to bind the insurance ...

Presentation of data that excludes the first 5 to 10 years of experience of those who purchase life insurance. A mortality table shows the number of deaths per 1000 of a group of people. ...

Popular Insurance Questions