Life insurance rates are impacted by anything that might affect your longevity, including your personal health history, smoking habits, and current age. One factor that life insurance companies look at when determining your rate is your family’s health history. To determine how your family history will affect your premiums, you need to understand how insurers think and what they are looking for. Generally, they’re looking for a family pattern of illnesses with a strong hereditary component that could influence your mortality.
Insurers are mostly concerned with illnesses that affected your family members before the age of 65, so don’t worry too much about maladies that came on at a later stage of life. They’re also looking specifically for illnesses that tend to carry a familial risk, such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, or diabetes. Close family members, like a parent or sibling, are a better indicator of your health risks than more distant relatives.
If your family history includes some of these elements, what should you do? First, if it’s a single incidence of illness, you can relax. Insurers are generally looking for patterns of disease in the family, so just one relative with diabetes doesn’t mean your rates are necessarily going through the roof. Second, tell the truth. Your insurer can verify details with the Medical Information Bureau, so there’s no point omitting important details. Finally, stay in shape. The best way to lower the risk of many health conditions is to keep yourself healthy and physically active. Take this brief quiz on family history and life insurance rates from HealthIQ.com to learn more about this important topic.
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