When it comes to term life Insurance shopping there a lot of great companies to choose from. Often people make the mistake of choosing the brand they’ve seen more often, not realizing the other brands can be a superior choice. Often times less heard of life insurance companies are just as strong financially, offer great products, at better rates than their more well-known and better marketed competitors. Principal life insurance, while pretty popular, still tends to fly under the radar of most consumers, Yet it is a company with a great product to offer. As an independent life insurance agency we have no ties to any one company. This way we are able to have no bias in reviewing companies and their products. We are able to judge them objectively and see if they are a good fit for our clients against their biggest competitors. So let’s do that here and see if Principal Term Life Insurance meets the standard.

In Summary, here is what you will learn about  this product: 

1. It is a level term product with fixed rates for the entire length of the term, 10 to 30 years. 
2. You can convert the term to a permanent coverage without having to prove good health. 
3. The product is available with no exam for up to $1,000,000. 
4. It comes with additional riders for policy customization. 
5. They are a good company for those cancer survivors, those with epilepsy, and diabetes. 

That is Principal Term Life in a nutshell, now let’s dive into some detail.

Principal Term

Principal offers a Traditional Term life insurance plan that ranges between terms of 10 to 30 years in length. The coverage can have up to any reasonable amount for income replacement. It is a level term policy which means your premiums are guaranteed to stay locked in during the entire length of the term. Once the term period expires you will have the option to convert the policy to a permanent life insurance or renew it annually.

Option to Convert

The conversion privilege allows you keep your policy and covert the term product to a permanent one. You are able to this without having to take a Medical Exam or prove good health. The health rating you received at the beginning of the term is what you will keep even if your health took a turn for the worse during the term. The only difference would be a rate adjustment to your new age. Otherwise you will have the option to renew annually but this would cause your rate to go up every year.

Bonus: Accelerated Underwriting – Traditional Term Life with No Exam

Principal offered a really cool feature recently that allows you to get their traditional term product, with no medical exam required.

Why is this amazing?

Most no exam life insurance policies are about twice the cost of traditional term life insurance. However, Principal is offering their traditional term life insurance with no medical exam, at the same price as a medical exam policy. Not only that, they have the highest coverage cap at $1,000,000 while most no exam carriers limit you at $250,000 to $400,000.

Policy Riders

Riders are additions you can make to your term life policy to further customize it. Here are some of the riders associated with Principal’s term policy.

Accelerated Death Benefit

This is a rider that give you a percentage of your coverage amount if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness. You can do with this money as you please. That means you can use it to spoil your family, fight the illness, check off your bucket list, or nothing at all. If you happen to beat the illness, you don’t have to pay back the money. It will simply be subtracted from your total death benefit amount when you die.

Accidental Death Rider

This is a rider that will pay your beneficiaries more money if your death is the result of an accident. So they would get the original death benefit, with the accidental death benefit added if you die due to an accident. However, if your death is the result of a natural cause, they only receive the death benefit.

Waiver of Premium

The waiver of premium allows you to skip your premium payments with tough losing your coverage if you become unable to pay due to disability. It will waive your premium during the disability premium while keeping the coverage from lapsing.

Application Process

With Principal the application process can go two ways. Either you will be required to go the traditional route or you will do the accelerated underwriting. Let’s break down both.

Traditional Process

The traditional process includes your typical 6 to 8-week time to get approved for coverage. Although in the past we have seen principal approve people in as fast as 3 to 4 weeks. Here is the traditional term life insurance process step by step.

1. Application – prior to the application your agent should have done a thorough needs analysis to determine how much coverage you need and rate class you would qualify for based on your health and lifestyle. Once the application gets started your agent will ask you some basic personal questions like your home address, occupation, income and social security number. At this time, you will also set up your beneficiaries and set up the medical exam.
2. The Medical Exam – like most traditional term life products, all will require a medical exam. This happens at a time and place that you prefer. It will run like a typical physical along with a blood and urine sample. The nurse will ask you a few questions and be on her way.
3. Underwriting – At this point the life insurance company have your application, your medical exam results and now will dig through your medical history and motor vehicle report. They will review all of this information and determine the rate that you qualify for.

Accelerated Underwriting Process

For the accelerated underwriting version, the process looks a little different. After the application you will schedule a phone interview. This interview will take about 20 minutes and will consist mainly of health questions. Once they do they interview the underwriting will take about a week and you are approved for coverage if all checks out. If not, you may be required to take a medical exam.

Underwriting Specialties

All life insurance companies have some things that they do better than others. While company A might be better for smokers, company B might be better for diabetics and so on. Principal Life Insurance has a few specialties that they cover better than most carriers.

Cancer Survivors – for certain types of cancer history Principal is willing to offer preferred health ratings. Most companies will start you off at a standard even if your cancer was decades ago.

Diabetics – if you’re type 1 diabetic it can be hard to get coverage; Principal is willing to insure you in most cases. Type 2 diabetics also get favorable rates.

Epilepsy – Principal is also willing to give you standard rates if you have epilepsy. Which is better than a lot of the companies out there.

As you can see Principal Life insurance is a pretty solid life insurance company with some great niche trademarks that only they are good at.

More About Principal Life Insurance

Principal was founded in 1879 and is rated A+ by A.M Bet. That is a superior rating by a financial institution on their financials strength. That means you don’t have to worry about them going out of business. They have a total of $516 billion assets under management and operating earnings of 967.3 million.

Why We Like Them

We recommend Principal Life term life insurance to many of our clients and with good reasons. They are a company that has been super competitive with rates, had outstanding customer service, and continues to improve the way they do business. The accelerated underwriting is a huge step in the right direction for the modern day consumers. The most important part is that we like them because our clients do.

Start Here

Principal Life Insurance is an amazing company but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold them to the same comparison standard you hold all the other companies.  Do you due diligence and shop around with all of the companies, better yet, let us do it for you. We are an independent agency that represents over 60 A-rated life insurance companies on the market. We do the shopping on your behalf to get you the best rate, at no extra cost you! If you have any questions regarding Principal Life Insurance give us a call at 888-492-1967 or hit the chat button below.

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