Does AARP Life Insurance Program give a refund if policy is cancelled after 5 yrs?

Life insurance coverage and the policies that you enter into offer premiums that can cover you and your family for a long period of time. When looking at buying a life insurance policy, you should always consider your specific needs.

For example, some policies offer bigger payouts, but only if the policy is activated within a set time. If you don't use it within that time, you lose everything. More commonly, insurance policies require you to make periods for a set time before you realize the full policy limits. Prior to that, if the insured passes away, the insurance company would return a portion or all of what was paid. This waiting period is often a year.

If you're looking specifically at cancellations and refunds, the key point to keep in mind when thinking about life insurance policies is that you are paying for coverage throughout the term of the policy. If you die during a waiting period, your dependents are entitled to a preset amount. If you cancel, you are generally not entitled to a refund for all or even a portion of the premium payment that you have made after the term has concluded.

In your specific case, essentially you have paid for five years of insurance coverage. That service was rendered to you in full throughout the term of the policy regardless of whether or not a claim was filed. Insurance is a coverage service that is provided and paid for even when there are no payouts during the policy term. As a result, in order for you to receive a refund, you would need to prove that insurance coverage during that period was not provided to you which would occur when you were not assigned a customer number or allowed to enjoy any of AARP's promised services as stipulated in the agreed-upon contract. This is generally not the case with a company as reputable and experienced as AARP so this may be a fruitless exercise for you.

The only glimmer of hope would be if you canceled during a policy term that you prepaid for a number of years after you canceled the policy explicitly. In that case you are generally entitled to a refund for the months that have not yet been fulfilled from a service perspective. However, policies often have early cancellation penalties which can be exorbitant and tough to negotiate out of in the event of a cancellation so that is another point to take into consideration. 

If you're unsure, you can always look at your specific policy documents on life insurance products. You may be able to find a loophole or other provision that would give you a way to get all or part of your money back.

I would ask why you'd like to cancel your policy and get your life insurance premiums back. We generally think about life insurance when we have health conditions or are older. By its very nature, life insurance is cheapest and most accessible when you're young and healthy. The type of policy you get if you're already in poor health could also be severely limited.

If you cancel your policy now, even if you get your money back, life insurance rates could be higher, and you get a policy that pays beneficiaries less when it's enacted. Generally, the best route is to keep your current policy going.

If customer satisfaction with your current insurer is low, you can look at why. After 5 years, any reasonable evaluation period has already passed. The only question left is what will be owed in the claims process.