When you apply for life insurance, your chosen company goes through a process called underwriting, where they consider all the risk factors you may offer and determine whether they are willing to write you a policy, and if so, how much they will charge. In some cases, the underwriting process can take four to six weeks or even longer, depending on how long it takes to collect medical and other data. Some term policies offer accelerated or even instant underwriting, however, so in certain cases it may be possible to have an active policy within 24 hours of applying.