Life Insurance for Diabetics

Individuals with long term health problems are considered, along with smokers and purveyors of dangerous sports, to be a higher risk from an insurance perspective than the average citizen.

This will normally translate into higher premiums but this will depend on your situation.

There are different degrees of diabetes but for those on insulin diabetes does increase the risk of an individual suffering further health problems, such as cardiovascular disease.

This will be a factor that life insurance providers will consider when setting premiums.

Life insurance underwriters will assess your diabetes based on a number of key factors including:

• Your age when diabetes was diagnosed
• Most recent HbA1c reading
• Type of diabetes
• Diabetes medication you are taking (e.g. diet, metformin or insulin)
• Your BMI (e.g. height, weight and waist measurements)
• Any existing diabetes complications you have (e.g. nephropathy, neuropathy or retinopathy)

There are two types of life insurance available:

Level Term assurance – provides cover for a fixed period of time. If the policyholder does not die within that time they receive no cover. The sum assured remains the same for the term.

Decreasing term insurance  – fixed term life cover policies where the sum assured decreases over the term usually in line with a decreasing debt liability such as a mortgage.

Term assurance because can be personalised along the lines of:

• The length of the cover
• The extent of the cover
• Whether or not the cover is fixed

The main benefits of life insurance for diabetics will be the same as for anyone else mainly that it can be used to either:

• To provide a family or other dependents with a lump sum or regular payments
• To ensure that a person has cover for a particular period such as when their children are at university
• To make sure the mortgage or any other outstanding debts are taken care of

Life insurance for diabetics may mean that life insurance premiums will be higher, because insurance companies are always thinking about risk and calculating the probability of having to make a payout but this will depend on your personal situation.

It is important that the life insurance specialist you go through has a good understanding of life insurance underwriting policy, as insurers will have a different approach to underwriting diabetes conditions.

Our life insurance & critical illness quotes service allows you to compare quotes including to get the right life cover at the right price.

Why pay more for your life cover? If you have a quote from a life insurer use our quote services today to see how competitive it is.

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