Overweight Life Insurance
When applying to various insurance companies and providers for protection insurance such as income protection, life cover, critical illness insurance, accident, sickness and unemployment cover, height and typically the insurance provider will take into consideration the applicant’s weight. Insurance can be very handy to have should you have any commitments in a financial aspect. If you had any debts that you were concerned about should you become ill and die then these might be taken care of by the insurance policy. Insurance companies have general guidelines as to how much someone should weigh for their height and if you are over this then you may be rated (an increase in premium) or you may even be declined due to your weight.
Unfortunately it has been proven that if an individual is deemed overweight they are at a greater risk of developing more health issues than someone that isn’t. The type of health issues that can be linked to being overweight are things like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol.
An insurance company will take all risk factors into consideration during the underwriting process of your policy and if they feel that they are unable to give you a standard policy at a standard premium. They may increase the premium of the policy or even decline you upon the reasons that you don’t fit into their standard underwriting criteria. There are also a few other aspects that they will take into consideration. These may be things like if you smoke and drink and your occupation. If you drink and smoke excessively this can affect your premiums as well. Also if you have a dangerous occupation you could find yourself with a higher premium too. All of these can contribute to potentially making yourself at risk at an older age and potentially being diagnosed with something and generally being more of a risk to the insurance company.
There are many insurance companies that are out there that are happy to insure people that are classed as overweight. They simply charge them more money than if they were of a more ‘normal’ build and weight. The plans are not called overweight insurance policies but are adjusted accordingly. Typically they will provide their terms and conditions to you upon request so that you can see exactly what is and isn’t covered before you buy the policy, however these terms may differ once you personally go through the underwriting process. This means that should you have an ailment that they are unsure of or feel that it may cause a problem later on in the time period you have your policy for, then they may choose to write an exclusion into the policy.
When applying to an insurance company be as truthful and honest as you can be. If you are declined by one company don’t be afraid to apply elsewhere. This goes for if you are offered cover and a premium from one company; do not be put off from trying elsewhere as you may just get a better deal and policy than the one you have been offered in the first place.