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To be classified as a smoker to a Life Insurance provider, you will need to have used a tobacco product or nicotine replacement product (yes, this includes vaping) in the last 12 months. It doesn’t matter how much you smoked, or in what frequency, if you smoked a single cigarette in that time period, you will be placed into the smoker's bracket.
The short answer is, yes, smokers can get Life Insurance. But because smokers have a higher chance of dying earlier than non-smokers, insurers tend to balance that risk with the cost of your monthly premium. Which brings us neatly onto…
We know that being a smoker increases the risk that you will die during your policy term. This means that the rates you will pay on your Life Insurance will likely be more expensive than the rates of non-smokers.
Other factors also affect the price of your Life Insurance, such as your age.
But as an estimate to give you a ‘ballpark’ understanding, if a 30 year old smoker took out Life Insurance, the rate would be roughly a third higher than a 30 year old non smoker. This rate tends to increase as you get older too.
Providers will likely have different methods of calculating the risk, but generally, someone who vapes will be less risky than a chain smoker of cigarettes for example.
Honesty is the best policy when it comes to Life Insurance.
The aim of Life Insurance is for them to pay the people you love a lump sum if the worst were to happen. The last thing you want is for anything to complicate that, or to prevent your Life Insurer from paying out.
Better to be totally up front and honest at the outset. Sure, this could mean you pay a bit more over the lifetime of the policy, but at least you can rest easy knowing that your loved ones will have financial security if the worst happens.
There is no right or wrong answer to this question but the reasons for taking out Life Insurance do not change if you are a smoker.
If anyone would be financially impacted if you were to kick the bucket tomorrow then Life Insurance is probably worth thinking about.
Most people consider the following:
Of course the higher cost of the premium for a smoker needs to be taken into account and whether or not the premiums would be affordable to you on a monthly basis. To benefit from Life Insurance, you need to make sure your premiums are paid every month or the cover would lapse.
There are plenty of Life Insurance providers out there, so much so that it can be overwhelming at times to know where to go.
We're, Octopus Legacy, created after Sam, our founder's Mum died suddenly. Like many of us Sam's Mum hadn't put a plan in place, making a difficult time even harder. So we know how important having a backup plan is, and how easy it is to put off.
That's why we've made our Life Insurance quite so easy to tick off. It's all online, no medical appointments, no needles. Just 15 minutes and you'll be sorted.
