Life Insurance Cash Surrender Value Calculator

Unsure of how much you’ll get from your life insurance cash surrender value?
Use our simple calculator below to find out.

Find the surrender value based on an estimated return rate (scroll below for instructions).

Guaranteed Returns:
Enter the guaranteed returns of your policy

Illustrated Return at 3%:
Enter the estimated illustrated return at 3%

Illustrated Return at 4.25%:
Enter the estimated illustrated return at 4.25%

Desired Return Rate (%):
What is the rate of return you're expecting from the policy? Amounts out of the 3% to 4.25% range will yield inaccurate estimates.

How to Use Our Life Insurance Surrender Value Calculator

1. Open Policy Documents: The first step in using our life insurance cash value calculator is to open up your policy documents. For those who have already purchased their policies, look for your policy contract or details sent to you by your financial advisor. For those who are purchasing a policy, look at the quotation given to you.
2. Find Surrender Value Table: Head to the page where you can find your surrender value table. This is a large table with many numbers on it. Make sure you're not looking at the death benefit table.
3. Choose Your Year: Our calculator can only estimate the returns of your surrender value on a specific year. Based on your surrender value table, choose a year or the age where you'd like to find the estimated cash value of your life insurance policy. If selecting based on policy year, many choose a year between 20 to 30 years. If selecting based on age, many choose based on when they might want to surrender their policy. This ranges between 75 to 80 years old.
4. Input Data: Once you've selected your year, input the guaranteed returns into the Guaranteed Returns field. Next, input the estimated non-guaranteed returns based on an illustrated 3% and 4.25% into their respective fields. Do not input the total estimated returns into these fields.
5. Input Desired Return Rate: Input your desired return rate from this policy, or the return rates based on the insurer's annualised average participating fund returns. Keep the desired return rates between 3% and 4.25% for the most accurate estimations.
6. Calculate: Click on the Calculate button.

The results will be inaccurate if you are using par fund returns that are out of the range of 3% and 4.25%.

Here is the table that we’ve compiled calculating the annualised average returns of major life insurer’s participating funds:

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Understanding the Limits of Our Calculator

Our calculator is a handy tool to help you estimate the returns on your whole life policy at different interest rates. However, it’s important to remember a few key points when using it:

1. Best Within Certain Limits: It works best when you stick to interest rates between 3% and 4.25%. This is because our calculations are based on these figures, and these figures are what insurance companies provide you with. If you try to calculate returns for rates outside this range, the numbers might not be as reliable.
2. Guessing Beyond the Given: As we don't have the exact formula used by insurance companies to provide you with their illustrated returns, use our calculator to give you an estimate of what you can expect from your cash surrender value. If you ask for estimates way above 4.25% or below 3%, our calculator will still give you an answer, but think of these as educated guesses rather than solid predictions. The further the estimates are, the more inaccurate the predictions will be. We recommend using figures within the ranges of 3% to 4.25%.
3. Use as a Guide, Not Gospel: The numbers you get are there to guide you, not to make promises. They're based on past data, and as we all know, past performance isn't always a perfect guide to future results.
4. Calculations Out Of Range: If you're planning to use rates much higher or lower than our suggested range, it might be a good idea to consider a different life insurance policy from another insurer – assuming these numbers were obtained from our table above.
5. Only Within The Year: The calculator can only give you the estimated surrender value for that specific year you've chosen. We're working on a calculator that can project future value based on the data you've input.

Find the surrender value for a specific year (scroll below for instructions).

Input Surrender Values for 3% Illustrated Returns

Year 10 Surrender Value:
Year 15 Surrender Value:
Year 20 Surrender Value:
Year 25 Surrender Value:
Year 30 Surrender Value:

Input Surrender Values for 4.25% Illustrated Returns

Year 10 Surrender Value:
Year 15 Surrender Value:
Year 20 Surrender Value:
Year 25 Surrender Value:
Year 30 Surrender Value:

Input Target Year

Enter the target year you'd like the estimate for (between 10 and 30):

Estimated Cash Value at 3%:

Estimated Cash Value at 4.25%:

How to Use Our Life Insurance Surrender Value Calculator

1. Open Policy Documents: The first step in using our life insurance cash value calculator is to open up your policy documents. For those who have already purchased their policies, look for your policy contract or details sent to you by your financial advisor. For those who are purchasing a policy, look at the quotation given to you.
2. Find Surrender Value Table: Head to the page where you can find your surrender value table. This is a large table with many numbers on it. Make sure you're not looking at the death benefit table.
3. Input Data: For each year (10, 15, 20, 25, 30) provided in the calculator, enter the surrender values for both 3% and 4.25% returns as shown in your surrender value table.
4. Input Target Year: In the "Input Target Year" section, enter the year within the range of 10 to 30 for which you wish to calculate your estimated surrender values. For example, if your policy documents did not project for any specific year, our calculator will be able to project the estimated amount for you.
5. Calculate: Click on the Calculate button.

Understanding the Limits of Our Calculator

Our calculator is a handy tool to help you estimate the returns on your whole life policy at different years. However, it’s important to remember a few key points when using it:

1. Limited Range: It only works for years 10 to 30. You can't get values for years outside this range.
2. Assumes Straight-Line Growth: Our calculator thinks values grow evenly over time, which might not always be true in real life. Things like economic ups and downs or policy changes aren't considered in the calculations.
3. Accuracy Depends on What You Put In: If the numbers you enter aren't right, the calculator's answers won't be right either. Entering the wrong year or value could lead to incorrect results. The calculator doesn't check if your inputs make sense.
4. Guessing Beyond The Given: Based on our testing, the projections within the 10 to 30 year ranges are somewhat accurate across insurers. As we don't have the exact formulas that insurers use, and different insurers use different models, projections out of this range becomes highly inaccurate that we decided to not include in our calculator.

Have suggestions on how to improve this calculator?

We’d love to hear your feedback.

Life Insurance Cash Surrender Value Calculator

How to Use Our Life Insurance Surrender Value Calculator

Understanding the Limits of Our Calculator

How to Use Our Life Insurance Surrender Value Calculator

Understanding the Limits of Our Calculator

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