New research has told us that many Britons are not particularly bothered about life insurance. According to research carried out by Legal and General, as many as two-thirds of us have home contents insurance, but when it comes to life insurance, only around 40 per cent of us have bothered to take out a policy.

While this may not seem like such a big deal, it could be significantly important. So many people seem to think that having life insurance is not really worth it and the problem is that, once you need it, it is far too late. That is where it differs from home insurance, for example. It was recently reported that thousands of people affected by the summer flooding in England and Wales did not have any insurance and as such had to be bailed out by the government. But they now have a second chance and figures have suggested that an increasing number of Britons are now taking out home insurance in the event that such an incident happens again.

But with life insurance, people rarely get a second chance. If you are incapacitated to the extent that you can no longer work, or you contract a fatal disease or are killed, there is no opportunity for you to think 'Next time I'll take out life insurance and I won't have to worry about the medical bills/mortgage repayments'.

Another new report out over the weekend, from Christian charity, Tearfund, revealed that 42 per cent of Britons pray, with even 12 per cent of people who said they had no religion admitted to praying sometimes. At first reading this seems ridiculous to me - why would someone pray if they do not believe in anything? What good will it do them? Then it dawned on me - it's really an insurance policy. You may not actually believe that there is anything up there waiting for you in the afterlife, but on the off-chance that there might be, a quick prayer could make all the difference. Whether it would or not is a subject for debate that I am not about to go into!

However, it does prove the point that we all like to have some kind of insurance policy up our sleeve. And surely one of the most important insurance policies, outside the sphere of religion, must be life insurance, given that for most people, their livelihoods and that of their siblings will depend on it should the worst happen.