• Life insurance can be used to pay for funeral expenses.funeral for phuket"s matriarch image by Gina Smith from Fotolia.com
  
  Life insurance is meant to provide your loved ones with a cash payment upon your death. Life insurance is available in two different types of policies. Term life insurance offers the benefit of a lower premium and immediate coverage in the event of an unexpected death, but the policy must be renewed at the end of the term. Universal life insurance is also referred to as group universal life and group variable life insurance. This type of policy offers many advantages.
  
  

Flexibility

• Life insurance pays a death benefits to beneficiaries.Bills 1 image by Big R from Fotolia.com
  
  Group universal life insurance offers policy holders several areas of flexibility not available with term life insurance. Group universal life allows the owner to increase or decrease the amount of the life insurance policy, which creates flexibility in the cost of the monthly premiums. If a current financial hardship makes payment of the insurance premiums difficult, you can lower the policy amount to reduce the premium for a few months until your finances recover. As your financial responsibilities increase, you can raise the face value of the universal policy from $100,000 to $300,000 to ensure all of your debts will be covered in the event of an unexpected hardship. You can also add or remove beneficiaries to your group universal life insurance policy whenever you need.
  
  

Cash Value

• Group universal life insurance builds cash value and earns interest.Cash image by Greg Carpenter from Fotolia.com
  
  Term life insurance policies are available in time frames of 5, 10, 15 and 20 years to provide a period of life insurance coverage as long as you pay the monthly premiums. As soon as the term ends, you must begin a new term policy and continue paying the premiums. Group universal life insurance is like whole life insurance, because it builds cash value. As you pay the insurance premiums each month, part of your payment is applied to the insurance coverage and the excess is invested for you. Over time, your policy builds cash value just like a savings account.
  
  

Tax Benefits

• Check with your agent about your policy's tax benefits.tax defined image by Christopher Walker from Fotolia.com
  
  The cash value and interest your group universal life insurance policy earns every month is tax-deferred. In most cases, you can borrow money from the cash value of your account and may be able to avoid paying taxes or interest on the loan. If you have a group universal life insurance policy with substantial cash value built up, you may be able to set up a monthly or yearly annuity payment to yourself that will be tax-free. Depending on how your policy is designed, should you decide to surrender the policy, you can receive the entire cash value of the policy tax-free and pay only the surrender charge issued by the insurance carrier.