Life insurance for smokers
Learn more life insurance and smoking
What we mean by a ‘smoker’
Even if you don’t consider yourself a ‘smoker’, your insurance company might. As well as cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, for many insurers, including us, you’re classed as a smoker if you vape or use nicotine substitutes such as patches, gum or lozenges.
Is vaping classed as smoking?
Vaping is classed as smoking so if you puff on strawberry scented e-liquid, it’s treated the same as any other form of smoking and could affect your monthly life insurance premiums.
Can you get life insurance if you smoke?
The simple answer is, yes you can get life insurance if you smoke. But you’ll have to pay more than a non-smoker as it impacts life expectancy. Smoking causes around 74,600 deaths a year Footnote [1] so it’s riskier for an insurer to cover you if you smoke.
How much is life insurance for smokers?
To help highlight the potential price difference between a smoker and a non-smoker, here’s an example based on someone taking out life insurance with us.
A 35-year-old non-smoker, who wants £150,000 of life cover to last for 25 years, would pay from £11.22 a month. If that same person was a smoker, they would pay £21.18 a month Footnote [2].
Your premium price can also be affected if you’re an ex-smoker, depending on how long it’s been since you gave up
How to calculate pack years
Pack years are used to calculate how much you’ve smoked in your life. To work out your pack years, multiply the number of packs you’ve smoked a day by how many years you’ve smoked. So, if you’ve smoked two packs a day for three years, your number of pack years would be six.
What happens if you start smoking after you get life insurance
If you start smoking after you get life insurance, your premium won’t go up. But it’s worth reading the terms and conditions as you might have to let your insurer know if you start smoking, otherwise your policy might not be valid.
But how does your insurer know if you smoke?
It’s important to be honest about being a smoker when getting life insurance. Any information you give your insurer needs to be truthful and accurate to the best of your knowledge. Otherwise, you run the risk if you ever need to claim that they may not pay out. If you’re thinking ‘but how would they ever know?’, if your claim is investigated and a health report shows evidence you weren’t truthful, this could invalidate your policy.
What is considered as a non-smoker for life insurance
If you give up smoking, we’ll class you as a previous smoker when you haven’t used tobacco or nicotine related products for 12 months or more. If you gave up one to five years ago, we can consider different rates, and if you haven’t used tobacco or nicotine related products for five years, we’ll class you as a non-smoker for life insurance. Different insurers may have different guidelines, so make sure you check with them.
What happens if you quit smoking
If you took out a policy with us when you were a smoker and you then stop, this won’t automatically change your premiums.
However, if you now meet our definition of a non-smoker, you could be eligible to take out a new life insurance policy. You can get a quote to see how being a non-smoker affects how much you pay. Your past smoking history may still affect your price and smoking isn’t the only thing we think about when setting your premiums. We’ll also consider things like your current health and age.
Help with quitting smoking
Giving up smoking is not only good for you but can also bring your life insurance premium down. Want to give up but not sure where to start? When it comes to help with quitting smoking, it’s much easier to do it with some support. That might be from your doctor or a stop smoking adviser. They can explain the different options available so you can find one that works for you.
Next article
Types of Life Insurance
Related articles
