Life Insurance Outweighing The Benefits

 

Have you filled out a life insurance application lately? There is a little box that strikes fear into the hearts of the "mildly obese". It simply asks you to enter your weight. Do you go straight to the scale, strip down to a state of nakedness, and wiggle on said scales trying to determine the lowest mark on the scale? No, I thought not, you'll probably take a vague and overly optimistic estimate, write it down, and quickly move on to the next question. Most of us do. It's really not cheating. You know you're going to lose it soon, before Christmas/Holidays/Wedding. If only!

Now one of the UK's biggest names in life insurance, namely Scottish Provident, has added another innocent little question, when was the last time you weighed yourself, in an attempt to gain more accuracy in detecting risk factors? Aware of the fact that many people are weight conscious and tend to forget the few pounds they've gained since their last diet to end all diets, they feel this should help give a true picture of their clients' potential. health risks. It should also be noted that there are people who will lie in an attempt to get cheaper insurance premiums.

Scottish Provident are quite rightly concerned that they are being told the truth. The UK government takes obesity very seriously and it was recently reported that nearly a quarter of us are overweight, and according to Cancer research UK, around a quarter of them are not interested in losing weight. As a nation, we are second only to Greece in obesity rates.

The definition of obesity is based on the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the British Medical Association. To find out, you need to know your height in meters and then multiply by the same number. Take the result and divide by your weight in kilograms. This gives you your BMI, which can be used to indicate whether you are underweight, normal, overweight or obese. However, it will overestimate thickness in people who are muscular or athletic. These figures are for adults.