Vegetarians Fed Life Insurance Carrot
Summary
An interesting new product has been launched by Animal Friends Insurance. The life insurance policy offers discounted premiums to vegetarians, based on evidence that they are at a reduced risk than their carnivorous counterparts of developing certain health conditions. It remains to be seen whether other insurance organisations will follow the policy introduced by AFI .
A not-for-profit insurance business has marketed an insurance scheme which offers vegetarians and egg eaters a reduced cost mortgage insurance .
The deal, believed to be the 1st of its type, is being brought to the market by Animal Friends Insurance (AFI). The organisation is offering vegetarians a 7% lower priceon life assurance premiums
The firm claimed that veggies ought to pay a lesser sum for the insurance, which pays out if the person dies, because they were more unlikely to suffer from a range of chronic diseases, including cancers.
Rebecca Puttey, AFI’s senior director, said that the risk of vegetarians being diagnosed with certain cancers is lowered by up to forty per cent and the possibility of them suffering from heart disease is cut by up to 30%, but despite this they have, until now, had to pay the same insurance costs as plan holders who eat meat.
She says that Animal Friends Insurance believe this is patently unfair and says the life industry should acknowledge the fact that being a vegetarian can impose a positive impact on life expectancy and cut its premiums accordingly.
A full-price plan is also on the market for non-vegetarians. Both insurance plans are underwritten by LV=, which prior, was known as Liverpool Victoria.
In common with normal life cover, a range of factors contribute to the cost of the monthly premium including whether the applicant smokes, their weight, age and sex.
Currently, Animal Friends Insurance is funding the six per cent reduction in price itself from the fee it gets from LV=. In the future, however, the business’s objective was to offer lower premiums on specialist plans. In ,offering the discount the company is hoping to sign up enough veggies to make it worthwhile for LV= to underwrite yet another plan that takes the veggie diet into account.
Indeed there are huge savings to be made, a 38 year oldnon-smoker purchasing £300,000 worth of life insurance cover might potentially save £393.60 over a twenty five year period.
Where cheap life insurance is concerned, AFI believes that insurers should start to treat those that eat meat and people that don’t eat meat in approaches matching the way they view non-smokers and smokers. Hopefully others in the insurance industry will do the same.
Some senior executivesin the insurance industry are doubtful whether there is proof that vegetarians live longer, and how any insurance company could prove that those who had stated that they were vegetarian did not sometimes enjoy the odd lamb chop.
When it comes to smoking, the insurance company can refer to your GP’s patient records – if you now don’t smoke it’s possible that your Doctor is likely to be aware. However, this is unlikely to apply when it comes to eating meat, an insurance executive observed.
But many veggetarians say that they are not concerned about people falling off the veggie wagon and suggested that once a veggie has become a veggie, they do not return to meat-eating, that is unlike smokers who tend to drift in and out of their habit.
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