What Is Cash Surrender Value In Life Insurance? 
Cash surrender value in lie insurance is the amount of money you would walk away with if you decided to end a permanent policy before you passed away , or before the policy matured . Term life insurance does not have any cash value , so has no cash surrender value . In Whole Life or Universal Life , there is a surrender charge deducted from the cash value the first years , so there may be little or no cash surrender value until you have had the Whole Life or Universal Life policy for a few years . The amount of surrender value will depend on how you funded the policy , whether you had any loans out against it , policy performance , and length of time the policy was in effect . 