Perpetual insurance is a type of home insurance policy which is written to have no term, or date, when the policy would expire and from the effective start date, the coverage exists perpetually. The insured deposits money which is known as a deposit premium, with the insurer and in exchange, receives insurance for the life of the risk. The deposit is normally ten times larger than the cost of purchasing a non-refundable annual premium for an equivalent policy that extends insurance cover for a one-year term. The insurer must therefore earn enough income by investing the deposits in order to cover any losses and operating expenses for the operations to be economically viable. On cancellation, the insured is entitled to a full refund of the initial deposit premium, that too, generally without interest. Perpetual insurance was first issued in the state of Philadelphia in the year 1752 and is still used for fire and home owner's insurance policies.

In the United States of America, there are also tax advantages one can avail of by opting for a perpetual insurance cover. Though the deposit premium does not yield any income to the insured, the expense of the annual premium for term home insurance is done away with. Hence, the tax-adjusted, equivalent rate of return that the insured home owner would receive on the deposit premium can be calculated by taking into account the gross amount of money that he or she would require to earn to generate the amount of an annual premium for a term policy, and divide this by the amount of the deposit premium.

For instance, a house which costs $100,000 may typically be charged an annual premium of $1,000 for a term policy. This same house would most probably require a $10,000 single deposit premium for a perpetual insurance policy of similar coverage. A person in the 28% Tax bracket would therefore need to earn approximately $1400 in gross income in order to pay the annual premium for this perpetual insurance policy. Since this amount is no longer required to be paid annually, the tax-adjusted equivalent return rate to the insured home owner on the deposit premium would be $1400 divided by $10000, that is, 14%.

What ever be the type of insurance that one eventually decides upon, it is necessary to consider different aspects including the costs involved to arrive at the ideal cover that one must go for.