National Life Insurance Awareness Day: Protect those who matter most with VA Life Insurance

May 2, 2025, is National Life Insurance Awareness Day, and now is the perfect time to think about your life insurance needs. Life insurance is an important financial benefit that provides peace of mind to you and your loved ones. VA offers several life insurance options to meet the needs of our Nation’s service members and Veterans, such as Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, Veterans’ Group Life Insurance and VA’s newest offering—Veterans Affairs Life Insurance (VALife).

Why is life insurance important?

Life insurance provides funds to help cover expenses upon your death. With the right policy and coverage amount, you can cover funeral and other end-of-life expenses, provide income replacement for loved ones or pay off outstanding debts.

What life insurance programs does VA offer?

VA offers life insurance programs to Veterans, service members and military families.

For service members and military families

Active duty, National Guard and Reserve service members are automatically eligible to be covered under Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI), which now offers up to $500,000 in low-cost term life insurance coverage. TSGLI is traumatic injury protection coverage also included with SGLI up to $100,000.

Spouses and dependent children of service members covered by SGLI can also receive coverage under Family Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (FSGLI). Spouses can have coverage up to $100,000 with a premium paid, and dependent children are covered for $10,000 at no cost to a service member who has SGLI coverage.

For Veterans

Veterans can choose to convert their SGLI term life insurance coverage after separation from service to Veterans’ Group Life Insurance (VGLI), which offers term life coverage equal to the amount held under SGLI. Veterans must apply for VGLI within one year and 120 days from their date of separation. If they apply within 240 days following separation, they do not have to answer any health questions.

Veterans may also choose whole life insurance coverage through VA’s newest life insurance program—Veterans Affairs Life Insurance (VALife)—which offers guaranteed acceptance whole life insurance to Veterans age 80 and under with any level of service-connected disability (0-100%) and no time limit to apply. VALife offers up to $40,000 in coverage, has no health questions for enrollment, is fully automated online with instant decisions, has competitive premiums that will never increase for the life of the policy and offers cash value that builds over the life of the policy after the first two years of enrollment.

Some Veterans with service-connected disabilities may also qualify for up to $200,000 in coverage through Veterans’ Mortgage Life Insurance (VMLI), which offers mortgage protection insurance for those who received a Specially Adapted Housing (SAH) grant to adapt a home to fit their unique service connected disability needs.

Learn more

You can learn more about these programs by visiting VA’s life insurance webpage, or go to va.gov/life-insurance.