Group life insurance through an employer is a genuine benefit, and I'd never tell someone to turn it down. But it's worth understanding exactly what it is, because a lot of families discover its limits at the worst possible moment.
It belongs to the job, not to you
The coverage typically ends the day your employment does. That's fine if you leave for a better role with similar benefits. It's considerably less fine in the situations that actually matter:
- You're laid off in your fifties and find that buying coverage at that age costs several times what it would have at forty.
- You leave work because of an illness — the very illness that now makes new coverage difficult or impossible to obtain.
- You retire, and the coverage that was going to handle your final expenses simply stops.
Some group policies offer conversion to an individual policy when you leave. That's better than nothing, but conversion rates are often expensive and the window is short.
The amount is usually smaller than people think
Employer coverage is commonly one or two times annual salary. Picture what that actually covers: a year or two of income, at a moment when your family may need a decade of stability, a mortgage cleared, and children raised.
People often assume they're "covered" without ever looking at the number. It's worth checking your actual benefit amount — many are surprised.
You don't control it
Your employer chose the carrier, the amount, and the terms — and can change any of them. Benefits get trimmed during cost-cutting. Companies get acquired. None of that is within your control.
What I'd suggest instead
One thing worth knowing before you shop: rates are set by your age and health on the day you apply, and they only go one direction as the years pass. The cheapest this will ever be is today.
Keep the work coverage. It's usually free or cheap, and free coverage is good coverage. Then build a personal policy underneath it that's genuinely yours: it follows you between jobs, its price is locked at the age and health you have today, and nobody can take it away from you.
For most working families, a term policy does this affordably. If you're healthy and in your thirties or forties, the cost often surprises people in the other direction.