Summary
An interesting new insurance policy has been marketed by Animal Friends Insurance (AFI). The insurance plan offers discounted premiums to vegetarians, based on evidence that they are at a lesser risk than their carnivorous counterparts of developing certain illnesses. It remains to be seen whether other insurers will follow AFI’s lead .
A no-profit insurance business has launched a scheme which offers vegetarians and fish-eaters a reduced price life cover .
The offer, believed to be the first of its type, is being brought to the market by Animal Friends Insurance (AFI). The business is offering veggies a 6% discounton mortgage cover premiums
The business claimed that vegetarians ought to pay a lower amount for the cover, which pays out if the customer were to die, because they were more unlikely to suffer from a list of chronic illnesses, including cancers.
Sheils Hatline, A senior director at Animal Friends Insurance, said that the danger of vegetarians being diagnosed with certain cancers is reduced by up to 42% and the danger of them suffering from heart disease is reduced by up to 30%, but despite this they have, until now, had to pay identical insurance premiums as plan holders who eat meat.
She says that Animal Friends Insurance believe that this is not fair and says the life insurance industry should acknowledge the idea that being a vegetarian can create a very positive impact on life expectancy and reduce its monthly charges accordingly.
A full-price arrangement is also on the market for meat eaters. Both plans are brought to the market by LV=, which prior, was known as Liverpool Victoria.
In common with normal life cover, a range of things contribute to the cost of the premiums including whether the applicant smokes, their sex, weight and age.
Currently at the moment, Animal Friends Insurance is carrying the 6% cheaper premium itself from the cash it gets from LV=. In the future, however, the company’s aim was to offer lower costs on specialist policies. In offering the deal the business is hoping to sign up enough vegetarians to make it viable for LV= to underwrite yet another insurance plan that takes the vegetarian’s diet into account.
Indeed there are huge savings to be made, a thirty eight year oldnon-smoker buying £300,000 worth of life insurance cover might potentially save £393.60 over a twenty five year term.
Where serious illness insurance is concerned, AFI believes that insurance companies should begin to treat people that eat meat and people that don’t eat meat in approaches matching the way they assess non-smokers and smokers. Hopefully others in the insurance industry will do something similar.
It is thought that some senior managersin the insurance industry are doubtful whether there is any proof that vegetarians live longer, and how any insurer would know that people who had stated that they were veggies did not enjoy the occasional Big Mac.
When it comes to smoking, the insurance company can refer to your GP’s patient records – if you do smoke it’s probable that your GP is likely to know about it. But this isn’t the case when it comes to eating meat, an executive from the insurance industry commented.
But many veggies argue that they are not concerned about people falling off the vegetarian ways and suggested that once a vegetarian has become a vegetarian, they don’t go back to meat-eating, unlike applicants who smoke who tend to drift out and back again into their old smoking ways.