Posted by Victoria Milson | February 05, 2012

Top Ways to Save When Buying Life Insurance

Buying life insurance is a big step in your life. It also means you have created enough success that the people who love you can depend on you, and will be affected in many ways if you pass on. Life insurance gives your loved ones and dependents the gift of security. Given the benefits that it offers, life insurance is a relatively simple product to understand and buy. Here are a few tips to make buying life insurance easy and affordable:

  • Buy the right kind. Insurance comes in a number of different types. Do you need whole life, universal life, term life or some variant? For most people, term life insurance will give them the most protection at the lowest cost. Term insurance covers you for a given period of time, or term. For instance, if you know that you will be working for another 15 years, buying a 15 year term policy will cover your family in case you die and stop earning.
  • Buy sooner rather than later. For term life insurance, the lower the chance you will pass away during the term of your insurance policy, the lower your rate will be. If you buy while you are younger, the premiums will typically be lower.
  • Buy the right amount. One good starting point when buying life insurance is to purchase enough to pay off all of your debts and to replace your income.
  • Get in shape. Ultimately, life insurance is a bet on your life, and the insurer is betting that you will outlive your policy.

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Tags:
Buying Life, Buying Life Insurance, insurance, Life Insurance
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Posted by Gabriella Hopkins | February 04, 2012

BGI and VIB’s genomics meeting to take place on Feb. 15

Massive sequencing projects in practice

Both organizations are already collaborating on several projects, including the mapping of the genomes of more than 1,000 species of gut bacteria, compiled from 577 billion base pairs of sequence data. The leading scientific journal Science selected this work as one of the scientific breakthroughs of 2011. Large-scale genome sequencing is becoming ever more important in life sciences, healthcare and agricultural research.

Henry Yang, Executive Managemer of BGI, will start the meeting with an overview and introduction to BGI’s sequencing and computing infrastructure. Other talks, by BGI and VIB scientists, will tackle large-scale analysis of human genomes, metagenomics and microbiology, the genomics of model organisms and the computational analysis of the data generated in genomics experiments.

Attending the meeting is free, but registration is obligatory.

BGI , the world-s premier genomics sequencing company and VIB , a life sciences research institute in Flanders, Belgium, announce a joint genomics meeting, taking place on February 15, 2012. The meeting will feature several talks on BGI-s sequencing and computing infrastructure as well as VIB research in human, animal and microbial genomics and collaborative VIB-BGI projects. Both organizations are already collaborating on several projects, including the mapping of the genomes of more than 1,000 species of gut bacteria, compiled from 577 billion base pairs of sequence data.

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Posted by Mikayla Stevenson | January 30, 2012

World First Travel Insurance review: 9 out 10 for December 2011!

It doesn’t matter what kind of business it is – the people best placed to comment on the service are the people who use it: the customers. That’s why each month we ask every new policyholder for feedback. Then we share it. Here’s a selection of December’s customer comments and suggestions together with a response from our Managing Partner. It’s your chance to find out more about who we are, the way we work and our plans for the future.

Whenever a customer buys a new policy with us, we ask them to rate their overall experience of our service out of 10 – 10 being the best. Feedback was received from almost 100 people for the month of December.  The average rating was just above nine out of 10.

We also encourage our customers to give us their comments on our service and ask if they think there’s anything we could do better. Here’s a selection of the comments and a response to each from World First Managing Partner, Martin Rothwell.

Martin Rothwell: We do not expect to see any letters or medical records but we do ask all customers to make a warranty about their pre-existing conditions and to confirm they are not travelling against the advice of their Doctor. In the event of a claim we would ask for a claim form to be completed by your Doctor. If the claim is fo

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Posted by Gabriella Hopkins | January 22, 2012

Boxer Amir Khan to propose at lavish engagement party


Wedding insurance may soon be needed by Amir Khan, as he has revealed plans to propose to his girlfriend at a lavish ceremony.

In an interview with the Sun, the 25-year-old explained how he has purchased a £100,000 ring that will be presented to Faryal Makhdoom on January 29th.

The couple are to host a £150,000 party for 1,000 people at Bolton Wanderers Reebok Stadium, with stars including Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Ricky Hatton and David Haye on the guest list.

Despite enjoying a whirlwind romance since they first met last July, it seems everything was not always smooth sailing for the pair, as Ms Makhdoon admitted she struggled to understand Khans accent at first.

“When Amir opened his mouth it was completely different. It was like he was speaking in a foreign tongue so I just used to nod, agree with whatever he was talking about,” she explained.

Outside of his boxing career, Khan supports several charities and is an ambassador for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Tags:
Amir Khan, Lavish
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Posted by Victoria Milson | January 22, 2012

Nationwide Is Protecting Your Identity

When a policyholder’s bank account was drained, Nationwide came to the rescue.

What do you do when your bank account’s been drained by someone writing duplicate checks and you’re receiving notices from a check verification company about checks returned unpaid? If you’re a Nationwide ID Theft policyholder, you call the bank to close the account, call the police and call your Nationwide agent.

That’s when the system really went to work for one policyholder who faced exactly that challenge. Her agent, working with Nationwide’s ID theft partner, Europ Assist, was able to get the customer’s permission to take over the response.

Europ Assist’s ID Theft Resolution Specialist placed a 7-year fraud alert on the customer’s credit report, filed a complaint with the FTC and activated identity and credit monitoring to track the illicit use of her identity and monetary information. The specialist resolved charges resulting from the fraudulent checks and activated an alert to prevent additional bank accounts from being opened in the customer’s name.

Then, when additional fraudulent activity turned up on bank accounts the policyholder had not opened, the specialist followed up, resolving the charges there and having the accounts closed.

Ultimately, Nationwide and Europ Assist were able to get the fraudulent charges removed from the customer’s accounts and the money returned to her bank account. At the same time, the

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Tags:
Nationwide, Nationwide Protecting
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Posted by Gabriella Hopkins | January 14, 2012

Hybrid Market Share Shrinks, Diesel Grows in 2011

Auto sales in 2011 turned out to be pretty good for most automakers, including each of the Big 3. For the first time since 1988, all three domestic brands . The combined market share of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler came in at 47.2 percent, which was a significant rise from 45.1 percent in 2010.

Things werent quite as rosy for Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda, as both sold fewer cars in 2011 than they did in the year earlier. These automakers have led the way with hybrid technologies, with Honda introducing the first mass-produced hybrid automobile sold in the United States with the Insight in the 2000 model year. Toyota followed seven months later with the introduction of their Prius.

And for the second straight year, , despite the whopping increase in choices consumers have to pick from. Hybrid sales peaked in 2009. Back then, there were 17 different hybrid vehicles on the market. Now there are more than 30, yet hybrid vehicle sales decreased by 2.2 percent overall in 2011.

Hybrids sales have decreased, but diesel appears to be making a comeback in the U.S. market. Sales of new clean diesel automobiles in the U.S. increased by an impressive 27.4 percent in 2011 over 2010. An

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Tags:
2011, Market Share
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Posted by Victoria Milson | January 12, 2012

Six Things You Need to Know About Protecting Your Paycheck

While most of us understand the need to insure our cars and homes, many do not consider insuring what pays for those things our paychecks. It is crucial to understand the importance of properly insuring your paycheck with disability insurance. Here are answers to six of people’s most pressing disability insurance questions:

1. Where does disability insurance fit within my financial plan?

Disability insurance is there to protect your income, should you become ill or injured and unable to work. In essence, it protects your paycheck. Your financial plan needs to begin and end with income planning. Unless you first protect your income, there is no financial plan!

2. What about disability insurance through my work—isn’t that enough?

That’s called group disability insurance. With this particular coverage, you are just a tenant. You are not in control because you do not own the policy. It can be taken from you in an instant; your employer may give it up or the insurer may decide to stop insuring the group. You are at their mercy.

Plus, 70% of employers don’t offer long-term disability insurance at work, which means if you do have coverage, it’s probably short-term disability insurance, which would not help you meet your financial obligations if you were sick or injured for an extended period of time.

Also, keep in mind that group long-term disability insurance typically only covers your base salary, so bonuses, commissions, incentives, deferred compensation, stock options and pension contributions are generally not covered. In most cla

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Tags:
Paycheck
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Posted by Mikayla Stevenson | January 10, 2012

Brits conned by travel insurance ‘get out’ clauses? You’re safe with us.

Some travel insurance companies are in the news for all the wrong reasons. A number of British policyholders are furious with their insurance providers and have complained about being cheated by medical ‘get out’ clauses.

Knowing exactly where you stand with a travel insurance policy can be tricky enough, without media reports of customer complaints and suspected wrongdoing. So here’s a quick explanation of the disagreement as well as clear guidance on where you stand when you get cover with World First Travel Insurance.

What’s the fuss about?

Travel insurance policyholders have been complaining about insurers changing the terms of policies, after they have been sold.

Basically, some insurers are walking away from customers whose personal conditions change between purchasing their policy and going away on holiday (if they are diagnosed with a medical condition, for instance). It’s argued that some insurers use ‘ongoing medical warranties’ or ‘change of risk clauses’ as a get out if they no longer wish to insure the customer. This despite the fact that a customer cannot get a refund from their insurer on a policy if they wish to cancel it after the 14 day grace period.
It’s an issue that has not escaped consumer watchdogs

In a recent travel insurance survey, consumer group Which? found that nearly a

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Tags:
insurance, Travel Insurance
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