Online vs. offline term insurance-A comparison

Online Term Insurance

Offline Term Insurance

Cost-Effectiveness

Online term insurance is much cheaper. As there is no intermediary or agents involved, the overall cost comes out much less as the insurer saves on the commission.

Offline term insurance plans are sold by agents working for the company. As the agents take care of your application, they in return charge a commission making the overall cost of the term insurance higher.

Sum Assured

Online term insurance offers higher sum assured as it comes with low premium costs and low morality risks depending upon the insurer's age, habits and income.

Offline term insurance also offers great sum assured but due to the high cost of premiums and agent's commission, people generally go for low sum assured.

Flexibility

Online term insurance plans are hands down much more flexible. You just have to visit the PolicyBazaar website, compare all the companies offering term insurance, choose the best for you and pay the premium with just one click.

When you buy term insurance offline, the agent of the company visits you in person. It consumes a lot of time and effort and the main drawback is that you cannot compare other company’s policy plans.

Frauds

There are fewer chances of fraud while buying term insurance online. You can read all the terms and conditions related to the plan without any scope of manipulations by any third party.

Offline, the agent tries to persuade you and influence your decision in his companies favour. He can also manipulate the terms and conditions just to make you buy the term plan.

Transparency

As you read and fill all the documents related to term insurance yourself, there is complete transparency and hence no scope of the fraud.

Offline term insurance forms are mostly filled by agents who can sometimes mislead or manipulate you as per their own needs. Most of the time you get only the part of the information they want you to have to lead to a lack of transparency.

Claim settlement ratio

While buying the term insurance online, you can easily research the claim settlement ratio of different companies and choose the one which has the highest ratio.

When you are opting for offline term insurance, the truth about the claim settlement ratio of the company completely depends on the agent and there is no other way to validate the claims.

Hassle-free

Buying online term insurance is completely your burden. You have to fill in all the details and read all the documents carefully before investing.

Whereas offline, the agent takes care of all the forms and documents. You just have to sit and relax.