You
eat well, exercise daily, and in
general, lead a health lifestyle.
Qualifying for life insurance should be
pretty easy! There is that little
issue of a chronic lead foot in your
re-created General Lee and multiple
speeding tickets but hey...you're Vegan!
Driving record definitely affects your
ability to qualify for life insurance
and the resulting rate that
life
insurance company will offer you.
Let's find out if your driving impacts
might impact life insurance options.
Life
insurance companies will consider
anything that impacts
life insurance actuarial tables
and likely dismiss anything that has no
affect. Actuarial data just
refers to what attributes that a person
can exhibit which has an impact on the
chances of them passing away early (or
earlier than average). Some
items are obvious. Take smoking
for example. There's a direct
correlation between smoking and
mortality (passing away early) via many
diseases such as heart disease, lung
disease, various cancers, and stroke.
That makes sense that the life insurance
company will consider smoking and
consequently increase the rate charged
for an individual who uses tobacco
products. What about a person's
driving habits?
Definitely and for the same reason as
smoking. How you drive has a
direct impact on the chances of getting
in a car accident which is a killer.
Accidents are typically in the top four
list for causes of death in the U.S. and
car accidents rank 3rd as the cause of
death for men. Based on 2005
statistics, death in motor vehicle
accidents ranked 1st amount various
types of accidents. This is
definitely something the life insurance
company will want to reduce the risk for
and a person's driving record has a
direct impact. Let's break out how
the life company views different
reflections of a person's driving
record.
All
other
life insurance health class requirements being
equal, you can usually qualify for the
best tier if you have had no more three
moving violations in the last three
years. You should also not
have had a DUI (Driving Under the
Influence) in the last five years.
Usually the next tier down charges a
fixed amount (if the carrier offers this
option) if you have more than 3 moving
violations and/or a DUI in the last 5
years. For the standard health
class, you cannot have more than 2
moving violations in the last 3 years
and no record of DUI or reckless driving
in the past 2 years. Keep in
mind that this is only for your driving
history and does not consider other
health issues that you may have.
One
take away from all this is that time can
help in terms of qualifying for life
insurance with a more "active" driving
history. Sometimes we just need
time away from our own driving history
in order to obtain life coverage.
Please contact us if you feel your
driving record will impact eligibility
and/or rates. We may look at more
lenient life policies that offer some
immediately benefit with the option to
expand later on. We don't want to
wait a few years and then apply since
we're going without coverage during that
time and Murphy's Law is one you don't
want to break with life insurance.
For questionable driving records, the
better approach is to lock in the best
coverage possible that stays within your
budget and the re-evaluate later on to
see if we can get a better rate by
replacing the existing
life coverage or lock
in a hybrid life insurance from the
beginning which usually has an easier
underwriting for the initial step.
As life insurance brokers, our value is
that we can take your situation and
quickly figure out which approach is
better on the tail end of a more
challenging driving record.
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