Family’s Medical History and Its Impacts on Your Term Life Insurance Premium

Individuals choose term life insurance to provide financial protection to their families, post their unfortunate death. The best thing about term life insurance is its higher coverage at affordable premiums. However, insurers evaluate your present age, gender, current health condition, profession, duration of the policy, lifestyle habits before determining your term life insurance premiums. Amongst the factors that can affect term insurance premiums is the medical history of your family.

The reason why insurers evaluate the medical history of your family is to get an idea of your future health. Life insurance companies would not want to take a risk by providing a plan to an individual who has a high risk of dying during the policy term. Simply put, the higher the risk of dying while the policy is in force, the higher the premium an individual will need to pay. That’s why an insurer would like to know everything about your family’s medical history.

In this article, we will tell how the medical history of your family could affect your term life insurance premiums and other details regarding the same. Keep reading!

What Exactly Insurers Want to Know About Your Family’s Medical History?

The medical history of any individual’s family can help insurers know the pattern of mortality. With the medical history of your family, the story of your genetics can be evaluated. For example, if any of the immediate members of your family is suffering from diseases like diabetes, asthma, cancer, etc, you are more susceptible to inherit them as compared to someone who does not have any such thing in his or her family.

So, insurers consider this possibility before deciding the term life insurance premiums for you. Some of the most common genetic diseases can be diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, melanoma, prostate cancer, lung cancer, asthma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, kidney diseases, etc.

Do remember that different insurers will assess your family’s medical history in a different manner depending on the severity and frequency of a particular disease. So, insurers consider different factors before making the final decision, like how many of the immediate members had a particular condition, age when they were first diagnosed, etc.

Different Aspects of Your Family’s Medical History

The medical history of your family is basically made up of three important aspects — Heredity, the average lifespan of your family and family environment. You can know more about them below.

Heredity

The most important aspect of your family’s medical history is heredity because certain medical conditions can pass on from one generation to the next one. So, it is possible that if your mother is suffering from diabetes, you are prone to be diagnosed with the same condition at some point in your life. Insurers do not consider gender-related hereditary conditions. For example, if you are a male, your premiums will not be affected if your mother had breast cancer.

Average Lifespan of your Family

Insurers also take into consideration the average lifespan of your family. With this, they check how many immediate family members were affected with a particular condition, their age when it was diagnosed, and if they died at an early age.

Family Environment

Insurers also like to check the family environment when assessing the medical history of your family. The reason being an unhealthy family environment for a longer period can lead to grave diseases. So, it is important to have a healthy family environment for a healthy life and affordable term life insurance premiums.

Will I Not Get a Term Life Insurance Due to My Family’s Poor Medical History?

Now that you have understood how exactly your family’s medical history affects your term life insurance premiums, you should stay away from this misconception that you will not get a term plan because of your family’s poor medical history. Do remember that term life insurance providers never reject the application because of a certain medical history in your family. Your family’s medical history can only affect the premium of your plan.

So, you should understand that family history is not something you should worry about. You will need to pay a higher premium as compared to an individual who has no serious family medical history. Also, you should never hide about the family history when choosing a term plan as insurance companies will find it eventually on their own and that can lead to rejection of the death claim.