Life Insurance Needs Calculator

The human life value method

One common, simple way to estimate a life insurance need is to add up what your dependants would actually have to replace or cover if your income stopped — the income itself, any outstanding debts, and specific future obligations like children's education — and then subtract what they could already draw on: existing life cover and liquid savings or investments. What's left is the gap this calculator flags as additional cover to consider.

It's deliberately simple. It doesn't model inflation over the replacement period, investment growth on the payout, or changing needs as dependants age — a full needs analysis with an adviser would go further. Treat the result as a starting figure, not a final cover amount.

Worked example: the calculator's own defaults

Replacing KES 1,200,000 of annual income for 10 years comes to KES 12,000,000. Add KES 2,000,000 in outstanding debts and KES 1,500,000 for a future obligation such as children's education, and the total need is KES 15,500,000. Subtract KES 500,000 of existing life cover and KES 300,000 in savings and investments available to dependants, and the additional cover gap comes to KES 14,700,000.

What moves the result the most

The number of years of income you choose to replace has an outsized effect, since it multiplies your full annual income rather than adding a fixed amount — doubling it from 10 to 20 years adds another KES 12,000,000 to the total need on the default inputs above. Existing cover and liquid assets, by contrast, only ever subtract what they're actually worth, one-for-one.