At the time you set up a life insurance policy you are required to provide a range of personal information. This will include details like your date of birth, smoking status, and health information, and will also include information on any “dangerous” hobbies that you have. The life insurance company will assess this information, and finalise the cost of your life insurance.

Often during this process, the insurance company will decide that they need to increase the cost of the life insurance. This will commonly occur if the applicant has health issues that increase the risk of him or her passing away. For example a person with a history of heart problems will usually be required to pay more for their life insurance. It’s also common for hobbies or pastimes to result in higher premiums. In this case there are often steps you can take to make sure your cost is as low as possible. We will look at a couple.

First, it’s important to find out whether different life insurance companies would approach the pastime differently. For example life insurer ‘A’ might increase costs for your pastime while life insurer ‘B’ might increase costs less (or not at all). This is where a life insurance broker will come in handy – as they can quickly and easily compare the different life insurance companies for you and confirm which has the best approach. It’s quite common for life insurers to have different approaches, so this is well worth checking.

The next step is to make sure that the life insurance company adequately understands the pastime and the actual risk that it presents. In particular make sure that they understand the type of activity that you do, the safely precautions that you take, and the experience that you have. Life insurance companies usually err on the side of caution, so the more information that you can provide the better the chance that they can assess your life insurance application as accurately as possible.