Most life insurance companies won't take a credit card for premium on a cash value policy. They want a check, a bank transfer, or an automatic withdrawal from checking. But there's a way around it. Some online bill-pay services will charge your credit card and mail a check to whoever you owe, including an insurance company, for a fee of roughly 2% to 3%. You'll usually need a bill or a premium notice to send along, so your policy anniversary is the easiest time to do it. You can hear me work through a viewer's question on this in a video on funding life insurance with credit cards.
Why would you bother? I had a credit card offer with a 0% promotional rate, which means no interest on the balance for a set number of months. I ran payments through one of these services to pay back loans on my policies, and then I borrowed that money back out of the policies. That got cash off a 0% card and into my hands for the cost of the fee, about 3% at most. I think I paid one new premium that way too.
Say you put $10,000 on a card with a 12-month 0% promotion and a 2.9% service fee. The fee is $290. If you pay the card down evenly over the 12 months, you only had about $5,000 borrowed on average, so that $290 works out to roughly 5.8% a year. Pay it all off in one lump at the end and it's closer to 2.9%. Either way, it's cheaper than most other ways to borrow that money for a year. You might earn card rewards on the charge too, though the fee usually costs more than the rewards give back.
It goes badly when the promotion ends and the $10,000 is still on the card. The rate jumps to the card's regular rate, which on most cards is 20% or more. Now your premium is funded with the most expensive money you have, and that interest eats whatever the policy was going to earn. Missing a payment can also end the 0% rate early on many cards.
So I'd only do this with a 0% promotion, a fee you've looked up ahead of time, and a plan to pay the card off before the promotion ends. I wouldn't put ongoing premiums on a card you can't pay off in full. If the only way to fund a policy is to carry a credit card balance, the policy is too big for your cash flow, and where the premium money comes from is the better place to start.
The money you borrow back out of the policy is a policy loan, and a policy loan reduces your cash value and death benefit until you pay it back. Clearing a credit card with a policy loan covers the reverse move, when the card is the expensive debt.
If you want to try it, look up the service's fee and your card's promotion end date first. Then set a monthly payment on the card that clears the whole balance a month before the promotion ends.