Life Insurance -
Stay healthy and don’t lie
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Staying fit is integral to living a long healthy life. Not only will it help your wellbeing but drastically cut your life insurance. Unfortunately, there are people who are not maintaining a healthy lifestyle and lying about it to cut life insurance premium costs. If that includes you, it may only be a matter of time before insurance companies wise up and the consequences could be far reaching.
Insurers are slipping into a deliberate tendency these days to keep premiums down, by linking premiums to the fitness of the policyholder. If this won’t encourage a healthier lifestyle and so reduce the number of claims, then what will?
A perfect example is the PruHealth's Vitality Plan which rewards policyholders for staying fit. If they use the gym regularly, abstain from smoking and undergo regular check-ups, they can earn discounts of up to 75% on their premiums. The Plan is being sold by Boots as well as other places. Refraining from smoking, for instance, does not only mean you will not be classified as a high risk consumer, but you end up saving money that can be used to subsidise the entire life insurance premium.
Some however ignore repeated requests to maintain a healthy lifestyle and instead choose to lie about their health status. This risks their life insurance and critical illness policies being cancelled.
Most people cover up being a smoker or a heavy drinker, with others giving entirely false information about health problems or about their weight. This was the finding from a study by Norwich Union, which concluded that one in 14 customers tell such lies.
The best advice is to come clean, those policyholders who have found to have lied face their policies being declared null and void. Even worse than that, the consequences could be more far reaching. For example, if a breadwinner dies in the family, the safety net of a life insurance policy to pay off the mortgage could be taken away.
Better preparation when searching for a policy may mean that there is no need to lie. While it is always important to tell the truth about all material facts, it is also necessary to tell only that which is demanded by the insurer. Do not leave your financial situation to be decided by others. Getting financial protection equally means saving your money.
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