FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of insurance coverage does Lyfery offer, and which ones does it not?
Through Lyfery, you can take out life insurance and add permanent disability coverage if needed. These are the most common and primary types of coverage, also offered by other life insurance providers.
Currently, Lyfery does not offer critical illness insurance or additional accident or trauma insurance, but we are working to expand our offerings in the future.
Life Insurance vs. Accident Insurance
Life insurance and accident insurance are sometimes confused. It’s important to understand the difference:
Life insurance is broader and covers events caused by health-related issues.
Accident insurance only covers losses resulting from specific accidents (for example, permanent disability or death in a traffic accident).
Most deaths and cases of permanent disability are caused by health-related issues (e.g., sudden heart attack, stroke), so accident insurance does not cover these cases.
Therefore, accident or trauma insurance can supplement life insurance, but it cannot replace it.
Special Cases
Some people may choose to insure themselves specifically against trauma, accidents, or temporary disability and may not need life insurance. In such cases, it is worth exploring offerings from general insurance providers (e.g., If, Ergo, Seesam), whose products may include a broader range of accident insurance, including coverage for children and families, than what life insurance providers offer as add-ons.
How to choose the right insurance amount?
Life insurance is particularly important for those whose family’s financial well-being depends on their income or whose liabilities exceed readily available savings and assets. Here’s a simple guide to calculating the appropriate insurance amount.
Liabilities
Life insurance should cover your financial obligations so that your family won’t need to manage them themselves.
- Outstanding financial liabilities (e.g., a mortgage of €100,000).
- At least 2–3 years of income to provide financial security for your family (e.g., 3 years of income = €100,000).
Quickly accessible assets:
Consider how much of your assets can be quickly converted into cash.
- Readily available savings (e.g., bank savings, investment portfolios, etc.).
- The family home is not considered a readily accessible asset.
Example:
If your financial liabilities amount to €200,000 and your savings are €50,000, a recommended insurance amount would be €150,000. This is calculated as follows: €200,000 (liabilities) – €50,000 (savings) = €150,000.
Life insurance may not be necessary if your savings and assets fully cover all obligations or if there are no dependents reliant on your income.
Special cases:
Life insurance can also benefit those who are financially secure.
For investors:
- Life insurance can serve as a safety net, allowing you to invest long-term with higher risks while still ensuring financial protection for your family.
Example: A 1% additional return on a €100,000 investment portfolio generates €1,000 annually. This amount may significantly exceed the annual cost of life insurance.
Inheritance considerations:
Life insurance also offers inheritance-related advantages. For example, it can help avoid delays and disputes during the inheritance process:
- You can designate specific beneficiaries, ensuring that the funds go exactly where you intend.
- Standard inheritance procedures can take time and cause inconvenience. Life insurance helps to prevent such issues.
What is the Lyfery Health Dividend, Lifestyle Score, and how are they calculated?
The Lyfery Health Dividend is a unique benefit that reflects your health habits and lifestyle, reducing your insurance premium. It is calculated when you take out a policy and updated annually, affecting the following year’s premium.
The Lifestyle Score is based on factors you can directly or indirectly influence, such as:
physical activity and overall health
nutrition
blood pressure and body mass index (BMI)
risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption)
preventive actions (e.g., participation in screenings)
The Health Dividend ranges from 0–50%, with a higher score resulting in a greater premium reduction. It is calculated using a questionnaire, movement data from smart devices, and facial scanning technology. In the future, new technologies, comparisons, and recommendations will be added.
You can also manually enter blood pressure and activity data, but we recommend using mobile-based facial recognition and, if possible, connecting smart devices – these have a stronger impact on your score and Health Dividend.
Participation is voluntary. If you do not provide the required data or skip some questions, no Health Dividend will be applied that year. Our model is continuously updated and designed to be flexible, so you don’t have to achieve maximum results in every category.
Health Dividend results are available in the Lyfery self-service portal, and we will remind you when it’s time to update your data.
How is Lyfery’s market-leading life insurance price formed, and how do we finance the Health Dividend?
When looking at Lyfery’s pricing and business model as a whole and comparing it to traditional insurance companies, we are able to offer a solution that is up to 2x more affordable. This is made possible through cost efficiency, the impact of healthy lifestyle behavior, and lower risk levels, which allow for a better price. Over time, this can amount to thousands of euros in savings for our customers. To provide a clear picture of how our pricing compares, we’ve developed a dedicated calculator that lets users compare prices across different providers.
Lyfery’s monthly premium is composed of the following elements:
- Insurance payment – This is the monthly premium paid to Compensa, based on an exclusive partnership between Lyfery and Compensa. Thanks to Lyfery’s innovative business model and customers’ lower risk levels due to healthier lifestyles, this price is more favorable than traditional offers. This portion is paid directly by Lyfery to Compensa.
- Lyfery service fee (agent fee) – Covers the cost of providing and developing Lyfery’s service, and also plays a key role in funding the Health Dividend, the discount resulting from a healthy lifestyle. Our business model allows for significantly lower total costs compared to traditional insurance providers. The service fee consists of three parts:
€3 per month + 0.006% of the insured sum + 50% of the monthly insurance payment - Health Dividend – A discount determined by Lyfery’s lifestyle scoring model, which can reduce the total monthly premium by up to 50%. The Health Dividend applies to both the insurance premium and the service fee. This significant discount is funded partly through Lyfery’s service fee and through a profit-sharing agreement between Lyfery and Compensa.
- Preventive health services (optional) – We offer optional risk-prevention services through partners. These services are priced more affordably, and the cost is distributed over several months, making them more accessible than if purchased directly from providers.
Example of pricing:
Policy with €100,000 life insurance and €100,000 permanent disability coverage for a 40-year-old:
- Life insurance payment: €7.4
- Permanent disability payment: €3.0
- Service fee (agent fee): €20.2
- Health Dividend (40%): –€12.2
Total Lyfery payment: €18.4
What is the difference between loan insurance and life insurance?
Many Lyfery clients had loan insurance before insuring their life with Lyfery, often arranged when taking a loan from the bank. Insuring against financial risks is a very good idea to protect you and your loved ones! However, we recommend considering whether it might be more sensible to take out life insurance instead of loan insurance. Why?
The purpose of loan insurance is to ensure that (home) loan is repaid to the bank even if something happens to you. The beneficiary of loan insurance is usually the bank. A characteristic of loan insurance is that the insurance amount decreases along with the remaining loan balance, so insurance payments usually decrease over time.
With life insurance, you can specify the beneficiaries yourself and the insurance amount does not decrease over time, but insurance payments increase as you age. In the event of your death, your loved ones receive the entire insurance amount and can decide whether to use it to pay off the home loan or cover other necessary expenses, such as tuition fees, major repairs, or anything else.
Is it difficult to terminate an insurance contract taken out with a bank loan?
One of the common myths that often comes up when talking to our clients is the belief that if a life insurance policy was once taken out with a bank loan, it cannot or should not be terminated. We want to assure you with complete confidence: you are not “obligatorily and permanently” tied to the loan or life insurance you took out with your bank!
Banks cannot require (and do not require!) you to take out loan or life insurance for their benefit or to cover the loan. You can choose whether to insure, in what amount, and for which beneficiaries both at the time of taking out the loan and at any other time. You can terminate your existing life or loan insurance policy at any time and replace it with Lyfery life insurance. Lyfery life insurance acts as a financial risk mitigator just like life insurance purchased from a bank’s group company.
Based on our and our clients’ experiences, we can also say that terminating existing loan and life insurance policies is a very simple process – usually, it can be done with a few clicks in the bank’s online environment, without needing to justify anything, and on a date that suits you.
Read more about this topic on our blog!
Will the insurance amount still be paid out if Lyfery ceases operations or goes bankrupt?
First, Lyfery’s insurance coverage is provided by a very reliable partner, Compensa Life Vienna Insurance Group SE (Compensa), which is one of the oldest life insurance companies in the Baltics and part of the leading Austrian insurance group Vienna Insurance Group. Thus, the financial risk associated with your life insurance policy is managed by a large and reliable insurance company.
Second, we have agreed with Compensa that if Lyfery is liquidated or goes bankrupt, all insurance contracts with Lyfery will remain in force. Currently, the insurance contract is concluded on your behalf by Lyfery, acting as the policyholder. In the event of Lyfery’s liquidation, you will be automatically considered the policyholder, and Compensa will continue to fulfill the contract according to the agreed terms. This is also stated in Lyfery’s life insurance terms, point 15: you as the insured person will assume the role of policyholder without having to do anything, and the contract will continue.
How are risks assessed when concluding a contract, and can an application be declined?
Lyfery’s life insurance risk assessment consists of two parts:
Lifestyle Score and Health Dividend
We evaluate your lifestyle and health behavior — for example, your level of physical activity, nutrition, and other health-conscious habits. Based on this, you automatically receive a discount on your total insurance premium. This model applies to all clients and has been developed by Lyfery.Insurance Risk Assessment
Our insurance partner assesses your health information based on a health questionnaire. The questionnaire is usually short, but depending on the amount of insurance coverage, it may be slightly longer. It includes questions such as whether you have had any illnesses, surgeries, or accidents in the past.If your questionnaire shows no health issues, the contract can be concluded quickly.
If there are health concerns, we will ask for additional information. Based on this, the insurance partner will decide whether the policy can be issued on standard terms, at a higher price, or with certain limitations. You can then decide whether the proposed terms are acceptable to you.
In exceptional cases, it may not be possible to offer insurance.
Lyfery’s base price is very competitive and is based on the assumption that our clients generally have somewhat better lifestyle indicators, fewer health issues, and value risk prevention and healthy behavior. This means that the insurance partner’s risk assessment policy may sometimes be more detailed and conservative.
If we are unable to conclude a contract or if the offered terms do not suit you, it is worth exploring other insurance solutions from different providers. We are also continuously working on ways to offer simpler and better options for customers with a slightly higher-than-average risk profile — even if it is not possible immediately.
Under what circumstances is no insurance compensation paid?
Life insurance typically provides broad coverage – payments are made to beneficiaries regardless of whether the insured person’s death was caused by an accident or a serious illness.
However, please note that some high-risk jobs, hobbies, and activities are excluded from coverage. For example, insurance benefits are not paid if the insured person was intoxicated, engaged in illegal activities, or deliberately endangered themselves. Exclusions also apply to certain jobs and hobbies. For instance, if you work as a miner, sailor, or armed law enforcement officer, or if you engage in activities such as skydiving, skiing off-piste, or diving deeper than 40 meters, there is no insurance coverage for death resulting from these (and other excluded) activities.
And this is one area where we strongly recommend “reading the fine print” – please check that point 11 of Lyfery’s life insurance terms and point 7 of Lyfery’s disability insurance terms do not include anything that would make life insurance pointless for you. Feel free to contact us if you want us to clarify anything for you!
How long does the Lyfery life insurance policy last, and are there any costs for ending it?
The Lyfery life insurance policy is flexible and paid monthly – you only pay for the current month. We recommend setting up an e-invoice standing payment order to ensure your coverage continues without interruption.
The policy is essentially open-ended and remains valid up to a maximum age – up to 70 years for life insurance and up to 65 years for permanent disability protection. You can take out a policy between the ages of 18 and 63.
If you ever feel that life insurance protection is no longer needed (for example, once your loans are repaid or your children have become independent), you can cancel the policy at any time – completely free of charge. Simply email us at [email protected] and we’ll guide you through signing the cancellation form.
At the moment, policy cancellation is not yet available in our self-service portal, but we plan to add this option soon.
Are health services mandatory?
Lyfery has several partners who aim to support people’s wellbeing and health. For example, you can choose a comprehensive health audit alongside your Lyfery life insurance, which we currently offer in cooperation with Heba Clinic. This gives you a better overview of your health status.
Using health services is not mandatory. In the future, we plan to significantly expand the range of services so that Lyfery clients can conveniently access various services from one place, ideally at a better price.
From what moment does the insurance contract become effective?
Since concluding a life insurance contract consists of several stages (sending the application, possible additional risk assessment, receiving the policy, and paying the invoice), we are often asked from which moment the insurance coverage actually begins.
The insurance period, i.e., the start and end dates of the insurance coverage, are indicated on the policy we send you after concluding the contract.
Continued insurance coverage requires, as usual, that invoices are paid on time. To avoid unpleasant surprises, we recommend setting up an e-invoice standing order with your home bank. And if it happens that an insurance payment is missed, we will remind you at least once more.
Can the beneficiary generally be designated as "heirs"?
We have been asked why beneficiaries cannot be designated as “heirs” in the insurance contract without listing specific individuals.
At Lyfery, we require that beneficiaries be named specifically in the life insurance application because the process of determining heirs can take months or even years, which is a situation where your loved ones might need financial support immediately. By specifying individual beneficiaries, the insurance amount is paid out much faster under the insurance contract and there is no need to wait for the probate process to be completed.
Additionally, with inheritance, there is the complication that the obligations associated with the estate also pass to the heirs, which in the worst case can even become an obstacle to accepting the inheritance. However, naming a specific individual for the life insurance payout does not come with any additional obligations.
If you also take out disability insurance, you can only name yourself as the beneficiary for this. The purpose of this insurance is to compensate you for income loss.
Moreover, to ensure that your named beneficiary(ies) can claim the benefit as quickly as possible in the event of an insurance claim, it is important to discuss the life insurance contract within your close circle. Cases where the information about the insured person’s death does not reach the insurance company in time are extremely rare, but for the sake of your loved ones’ peace of mind, it is still reasonable to inform them in advance: if something happens to me, you will be financially protected.
