Term Life in Taiwan 8x cost of in USA!?

Business Money
1

Ever seen an insurance cost comparison website like this one, but for Taiwan? term4sale.com/

OK, after you finish laughing, you might like to punch your numbers into that website. In my case I got quotes from $550 - $800 for a 10 year US$500K term life policy. (That site covers Canada too, or maybe your home country has some similar site).

Here in Taiwan, our friendly recommended agent said the premium was about 8x as high. Not even sure it covers earthquakes and wars and PRC missiles. So is life here really 8x as dangerous? Or are the insurance companies GOUGING. I realize its a smaller market, and there is price fixing, and no price comparison website, but jeez I like to get kissed before I get f*cked.

They also said, oh we have insurance for Foriegn Spouse, but only FEMALE foreign spouse. Guess they have lazy actuaries here.

Maybe the answer is to try to get a US carrier to write me. I talked to one once though, and when they found out I lived abroad they freaked out. Maybe I shoulda lined it up before I moved here.

Now, if the market for term life is like this, it should be safe to assume that the gouging is even more wild for other lines of insurance. Without price comparison websites, they’re free to just drain the blood right out of your arteries.

Anyone got any ideas what to do? I suppose young english teachers here are young and carefree and don’t care about insurance, and the other gwei lo are here on a package which covers everyone in their company even those assigned to Iraq.

2

Very ineresting. I doubt that you will find anything like term4sale in Taiwan. In fact, I doubt you will find many agents who will readily acknowledge that anything like term life exists without twisting their arms. You’ve no doubt noticed that Chinese generally swallow deep the line that cash value/whole life policies “are best because at least at the end, you get something back.”

Are you talking to agents who only sell for a single insurance company, or are these brokers who will get you quotes from a range of companies? The former is what is the norm in HK, so I would assume that independent brokers would also be rare or non-existent in Taiwan. Anybody know otherwise? I’ve always assumed that in places where there are no independent brokers, the markets for mortgages and insurance are not as efficient as in places where brokers are abundant enough to keep the lenders and insurers honest.

If you cannot get a policy in Taiwan for non-extortionate rates, you might try HK. I know that a number of insurance companies here will sell policies to mainlanders, so I’d imagine they’d do the same for Taiwan residents (or maybe not, considering that the mainlanders are on the right end of the missiles from an insurers perspective). I’m not sure they’d sell you term, though, since they need to be able to measure the risk much more carefully for a term policy buyer.