Variable life insurance is a form of cash value life insurance, a policy that provides both a death benefit and cash value for future use. Variable life insurance policies have a fixed premium and carry life coverage just as whole life policies do. What makes variable life insurance unique is the opportunity it provides to the policyholder to direct the investment of his or her policy's cash value.

With variable life, you can direct the cash value of your policy to your choice of investment funds: stock funds, bond funds, or money market funds. The performance of the investments in the funds determines the amount of cash value available for payout. Most policies make it fairly easy to transfer money among funds to take advantage of changing market conditions.

Yet another variation combines the investment options of variable life with the ability to change coverage, premium, and savings levels found in universal life policies: this is the variable universal life policy.