The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday, May 5, edition that mortgage life insurance is often pushed by banks and brokers. The Globe's Erica Alini writes that it, however, has key drawbacks: your premiums stay the same while your coverage diminishes as you pay off your mortgage. Any payout goes straight to the bank, not your family. And that's if there's a payout at all. With this kind of insurance, the underwriting happens only after a claim is filed. If the process finds, say, a pre-existing health condition that wasn't flagged at enrolment, the claim could be denied. Insurance broker Gavin Dyer looked at a hypothetical couple of healthy, 40-year-old non-smokers with a $600,000 mortgage. A big bank mortgage life insurance policy would pay just over $180 a month in premiums for a policy that would pay out, at most, $600,000. If they each took out 20-year term life insurance for $600,000, they would pay less than $89 a month combined. And that's for, potentially, double the payout. If they both died, the claims would pay $1.2-million, not $600,000, regardless of what's left on their mortgage loan. Mr. Dyer says, "Independent term insurance is almost certainly the better product."