Overeating inflates life insurance cost as well as waistline

Piling on the pounds can do more than just damage your health - it could also leave you out of pocket.

Weight can have a significant impact on your life insurance premium, Legal & General has warned, as insurers tend to take your body mass index (BMI) into account when calculating your risk of ill health.

Bonnie Burns, the insurer's protection marketing director, explains: "Whilst the dangers of poor nutrition are becoming more widely accepted by the public, the impact of weight on insurance premiums is less well understood."

Ms Burns revealed that BMI is regarded as the best indicator of weight-related health risk, with insurers comparing people's index rating against an acceptable range.

"Anyone finding themselves outside this range may find that their premiums are higher than for someone at the same height as them but with a thinner waist," she concluded.

Legal & General has confirmed that only people with a BMI in excess of 30, the level at which people are considered to be clinically obese, are at risk of elevated premiums.

Severely overweight people are advised to adopt a healthy eating regime and introduce some form of exercise into their daily routine, although medical advice should be sought for clinically obese patients who want to exercise safely.

For those patients who have already failed to lose weight by traditional methods, prescription drugs and obesity surgery are becoming increasingly more popular, and the majority of doctors agree that the benefits of surgery to both life expectancy and quality of life far outweigh the relatively small risks of the procedure.

© Adfero Ltd