Declined Life Insurance? Here Is Your Solution!

fe insurance policies pay out in the event of your untimely demise. However, some people have a hard time even getting a life insurance policy. Were you recently declined for a policy? Here are a few reasons why you may have been denied coverage.

1. Your Weight

If you are overweight - or worse - obese - your life insurance premiums will probably be sky high. Of course you can still be overweight and healthy, but life insurance companies only look at the major statistics, and those say that if you have a lot of meat on your bones, you are a higher risk to the company. Being overweight alone isn’t enough to make most companies decline you, but the health problems that are associated with obesity like heart disease certainly will.

2. Your Job

If your job is kind of risky then you can expect to get denied for life insurance. Professions may include logging, where you may be working around falling trees in hazardous weather conditions, roofers who work up high and have a likelihood of falling, and even farmers who work around heavy equipment and in dangerous conditions.

3. Your Hobbies

Hobbies like rock climbing, scuba diving and surfing will definitely make you hard to insure for life insurance policies. If you have one of these hobbies, you will probably see high rates before you get declined life insurance.  However, if you have a dangerous hobby plus another factor that isn’t attractive to life insurance companies, a decline is pretty likely. If you want cheap life insurance you may have to reign in your adventurous side.

4. Drug and Alcohol Use

If you admit to using drugs or alcohol to excess then you can assume that is a reason for declined life insurance. Life insurance providers want to insure people who are very healthy who are unlikely to pass on soon. They want to see people who take responsibility for their lives, not people who take risks with drug use and alcohol abuse. A few beers now and again aren’t going to hurt your rates on life insurance but if you’re a heavy drinker you can expect high rates or declined coverage.

5. Family History

If your family has a history of harmful diseases like cancer or heart problems, you may be uncoverable by some life insurance policies. Of course in most cases they will just up your premium, but if you have a combination of unhealthy factors including a family history of early death and disease then you may be declined by some life insurance providers.

6. Incurable Diseases

Some incurable diseases like herpes aren’t really life threatening. However, HIV, AIDS, diabetes, parkinson’s disease and some forms of hepatitis are big factors that would lead to declined life insurance. If you suffer from any of these conditions that is probably why you have been declined! It might seem unfair because they have made great strides in the research and treatment of these diseases and they now have longer life expectancies than ever before, but that’s the way it is.

7. Travel Habits

Do you frequently travel to war torn or third world countries? If so then that is definitely a reason for a life insurance company to take a closer look at you and think long and hard about whether or not they really want to insure you. If you are spending time in a place that could be bombed or where you could contract an otherwise easily avoided disease, that may be the reason for your declined life insurance.

8. Your Driving History

If you have a history of bad driving then chances are you won’t be able to get life insurance, or you will have very high premiums. This is because life insurance companies want to insure people who are less likely to die and there’s aren’t many faster ways to get yourself maimed or killed than speeding down the highway erratically changing lanes or driving drunk.

What to Do If You’ve Been Declined Life Insurance

Most life insurance policy providers will tell you why your policy was declined if you ask. So, the first step is to find out why you were declined. Don’t take a declination of coverage personally. The underwriters are just looking at the facts and statistics. The next step is to confirm that all of the information you gave the underwriters was correct. Confirm the results of any exam with your doctor and make sure that it isn’t an error that caused your decline. If all else fails, you should get a few quotes from different life insurance companies. Many of them deal with information differently. There are specialty insurance companies for certain types of professions and dangerous hobbies. It may be helpful to connect with an agent who can look at what makes you high risk and then connect you with a company that is likely to be able to insure you. You may need an industry insider to give you the best possible advice.