Improving your health and smoking cessation may let you get lower life insurance rates.
While the ideal approach is to secure the best rating while you’re young and healthy, everyone's situation is different. It’s common for people to seek coverage with one or several conditions which insurance companies view as risks, and they will be rated accordingly for their policy. That rate class will be locked into your policy.
However, there are options as time progresses and whatever detrimental factors were present may no longer be relevant.
"Whatever it is that got you your rate, you try to fix," Cunningham states.
A common situation is that someone has a tobacco rating when they obtain a policy, and they later quit smoking. If enough time has passed, they may qualify for a better rating when they apply for a policy with another company. This requires the person to take initiative, however.
"If you were a smoker and you stopped smoking, they are not going to call you and ask if you stopped smoking -- you have to reapply to another insurance company to get a better rate,” Cunningham says.
The same basic approach applies to many different conditions, such as when someone may be eligible for a better rating after they lower their BMI or cholesterol or are cured of an illness.
"It's something that's very common," Cunningham assures, "that people will continue to reapply for insurance because they had one impairment on their file that as time progressed became less of a concern."