Some Points To Remember Before You Buy Insurnace?

For those who are not maintaining a healthy lifestyle, it’s still not too late to get insured. Here’s how?

- Manish Jain

The lifestyle and working conditions are taking a toll on the health of most of us. It is becoming common for most people to complain about health conditions once one crosses the age of 40. To make matter worse, there are many who not only overweight but also smoke, drink besides working in a high-stress job and keeping irregular hours. What’s more, they do not have any life and health protection for their family members. This makes them fall in the high-risk category when it comes to insurance coverage.

However, nothing keeps them away from being insured. Being overweight or a chainsmoker and a heavy drinker certainly puts them in a high-risk category as far as life insurance or health insurance is concerned. But, that does not mean one cannot get a life or a health cover.

Medical underwriting 

In addition to the financial underwriting that every insurer does to decide how much of life cover can be given to an individual, they also have in place the medical underwriting guidelines that help them to decide on the health profile of the individual. Some of the factors considered for placing a life on high or low risk health profile are height, weight, state of health, history of disease, amount of cover and the occupation. The insurer also carries out a series of medical tests to determine the health risks.

Pay extra ‘loading’ 

The high-risk people bring adverse risk into the pool and therefore the persons with good health stands at a disadvantage. Those who are not in the right state of health i.e. not within the insurer’s norms with regard to medical conditions are made to pay up extra.