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Hi everyone, we have Alan Knowles back with us and we are taking a look at how lifestyles can affect options and pricing of life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection. Being a smoker usually doubles your premiums for protection insurance, as the stats show that you are far more likely to make a claim on the insurances. Not only this, but being a smoker can lead to your applications being declined depending upon your medical history.

Alcohol can also have quite an influence on options for insurance. If you’d had a few intense drinking sessions in your late teens early twenties and your GP said to calm it down, that might not be too much of a concern to some insurer. But, there’s often a question about ever being told to reduce your alcohol consumption, that can lead to quite a different insurance journey if the answer is yes.

The key takeaways:

• Some insurers class you as a non-smoker after 5 years or no nicotine consumption, for others it’s up to 5 years
• The weekly limits for alcohol consumption in the UK have changed, and it’s affecting insurance applications
• Two case studies of arranging life insurance for people who have had excessive alcohol consumption in the past

Next time Alan is going to be back with me and we are going to be talking about underwriting of chronic fatigue/ME.  

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors NextGen Planners.