Credit Card Insurance: Is It Overpriced?
The
answer to the question of whether credit insurance is
overpriced depends whether you are looking at it as a whole
or whether you are looking at it in terms of what other
credit card issuers are charging. Even if your credit card
issuer charges more than that of another issuer, you have to
look at the benefits that are part of the package before
drawing any conclusions. For example, Credit Card Issuer A
may only charge 1.5% for disability insurance but requires
that you be out of work the usual thirty days but will only
pay for six months, whereas Credit Card Issuer B charges 4%,
still requires a thirty-day wait but pays for one year. You
need to consider these things before you determine that your
credit card issuer charges too much for credit card
insurance, and as such, make the decision not to purchase
it.
Credit card insurance is an open market, and you have to
remember that the credit card companies themselves are not
financing the insurance, but are contracting with an
insurance company to provide the benefits. Because of this,
there is going to be a fluctuation between different credit
card issuers because they will be using a different
insurance company in most cases. Even if they use the same
company, there may be different reasons why rates are
different with credit card issuers, one of the most likely
be the amount of participation. One of the rating factors
that insurance companies use for premiums is the number of
participants in a group, meaning the more participants, the
lower the rate will be. This is why group rates for any kind
of insurance are lower than that of an individual
policyholder. The amount of claims is also a contributing
factor, which may be another reason different credit card
issuers have different rates for credit card insurance.
Before making a decision based on the rates your credit
insurer charges, make sure you consider all of the
possibilities and look at what the future may hold for you
if for some reason you need the insurance and it is not
there. Remember, once you become ill or injured, you cannot
suddenly decide to take the insurance in order to cover that
incident. The insurance must be in force prior to the
incident in order for it to be covered.
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