Life Insurance for Smokers

If you smoke and are looking to purchase life insurance, you’re going to find that your premiums are roughly double what a non-smoker pays. Why so much? It’s a simple matter of mortality; smokers die earlier than non-smokers.

And what qualifies as a smoker these days is just about any type of tobacco or marijuana useage, however infrequently. Smoke a cigarette every six months and you are going to be categorized as a smoker by the insurance company.

There’s two small outs to this. The first one is that some companies may overlook one or two cigars a year. But it must be cigars you are smoking. And secondly if you’re planning on quitting there’s a company that will help you out financially with that.

Equitable Life has a ‘Smoker’s Incentive Program’. Purchase one of their life insurance policies at smoker rates then within the first two years of policy issue you need to quit smoking for 12 consecutive months. Equitable Life will drop you down to the nonsmoker rates you would have qualified for when the policy was issued (so you’re getting nonsmoker rates from a younger age) AND they’ll actually refund the difference in premiums for the last 12 months. What better way to celebrate your quitting smoking than getting a cheque from the life insurance company?

You can use the quoting form on the right to run a Canadian quote for life insurance for smokers. You’ll likely find that Equitable Life has very competitive rates even without the added bonus of the Smoker’s Incentive Program.

***Update January 1, 2008:  As of today, Equitable Life has modified this smoking incentive program to limit the refund to one month’s difference in premium down from 12 months.