Life Insurance for Hazardous Activities in Canada

Different companies assess that risk differently. In my files, the same hobby has come back at the regular price, with an extra charge, or with the activity written out of the policy, depending on which insurer looked at it.

This page puts a monthly price on each of those outcomes, shows what underwriters weigh besides the name of the sport, and explains how to find out which answer you’re likely to get before you apply anywhere.

Based on current carrier rates, illustrative only, subject to underwriting and change. Assumes standard non-smoker rates with no other ratings, and that you qualify for CPP Simplified Elite on its health questions. The $134 figure adds a $2.50 per $1,000 extra charge to the regular rate by simple arithmetic; it is not an insurer’s quote.

What this page answers

• Four ways insurers handle a hazardous activity PRICES
• What counts as a hazardous activity
• What underwriters weigh besides the sport
• Scuba, skydiving, climbing, snow, racing and flying
• Whether a no-medical policy asks about hobbies FORM BY FORM
• Extra charge or exclusion, and getting one removed REAL FILES
• How to lower what you pay with a risky hobby
• Starting a hobby after your policy is issued
• Critical illness, disability and accident riders
• Questions people ask

How Insurers Handle Hazardous Activities: Four Outcomes and What Each Costs

A traditional insurer will either accept a hazardous hobby at the regular price or, if it falls outside what they accept, likely come back with one of two things: an exclusion on the activity, or a rating, which means a premium much higher than quoted. The fourth outcome, a decline, is the least common in my files. Alongside all four sits a different route: what’s known as a simplified policy, which asks fewer health questions and, at the insurers that accept the hobby, carries no exclusion or rating for it on the policy as issued.

An exclusion can still make sense in the right file. It just means that, although ideally we’d like you covered while you’re doing the thing itself, that one activity is carved out and everything else stays in. One insurer’s underwriting notes put the logic plainly: an exclusion is for a risk too great to rate, but not great enough to decline.

A rating takes a regular plan and just makes it a lot more expensive, because they deem the risk of payout much higher. With a hobby it’s usually a flat extra. On every thousand dollars of coverage they charge an extra $2.50, or $5, or more, every year it applies. Many stay on for the life of the policy, some are set for a limited period, and on a 20-year term a permanent one adds up fast.

Even at $2.50 per $1,000, a flat extra that stays on for the full term costs more than three times the policy itself. That’s why the regular price on a term life insurance quote only tells half the story with a hobby in the picture: two insurers can show the same regular price and treat the same hobby very differently.

What Counts as a Hazardous Activity for Life Insurance (and What Usually Doesn’t)

The wording of the question will matter, because for life insurance a hazardous activity is essentially whatever the application’s hobby question names, plus anything similar. In practice that means a high-risk sport or pastime, or flying an aircraft yourself, done recently or planned. Your job is a separate question.

That last line comes with a catch. Mountain biking on its own usually isn’t asked about; it’s backcountry skiing, that type of thing, the forms want to hear about. But a catch-all can still reach a sport sitting close to a named one, so if yours is borderline, disclose it and let a questionnaire carry the detail rather than leave the insurer to find it later.

The question is about what you do for fun. It sits with the other lifestyle questions on the application, and your job has its own question, so a dangerous occupation is assessed separately. Flying counts when you’re the pilot, not when you’re a passenger.

So a sport you gave up three years ago usually sits outside the question, and a trip you’ve already booked sits inside it, even if you’ve never done the activity before.

What Underwriters Weigh Besides the Activity Itself

Beyond the name of the sport, an underwriter is looking for a pattern. On a file with two skydives, my read was that if it was more than two, it would be challenging, because the insurer looks at it as someone who does this frequently. Once or twice reads as an experience. A pattern reads as a risk.

Timing works the same way. Those two jumps were only seven or eight months old, and had it been five years ago, it would have been a little bit different. Recent activity tells the insurer the hobby is live; something you stopped years ago, with nothing planned, usually reads as finished.

Combinations change the picture too. Mountain biking on its own wouldn’t be a huge concern for an insurance company, but combined with backcountry skiing in avalanche terrain, I expected a rating on that file.

Answer every line with real numbers, not ranges you hope sound better. Sometimes part of it is the advisor outlining things in a cover letter, giving explanation beyond what gets read on the form, and that can be important as well.

Scuba, Skydiving, Climbing, Snow Sports, Racing and Flying: Where the Lines Fall

Because you’re under 100 feet, there’s no exclusion, and there should be no extra premium charge. That’s how I explained it to a recreational diver, and every sport on this page has a line like it: the point where the regular price usually stops.

Flying is the one where an exclusion isn’t always on the table. One insurer’s guidelines say an aviation exclusion is generally not available, even for sport flying, so a pilot there is choosing between an extra charge and a different kind of policy.

These are starting points from insurer guidelines, not prices. Where a file lands inside a zone comes down to how often, how recently and how carefully you do it, and two insurers can put the same file in different zones.

Does a No-Medical or Simplified Policy Ask About Hobbies?

Some do and some don’t. Simplified issue simply relates to the number of questions asked, and the advantage is that the lifestyle question may not be on the application at all. Where it is, a yes either moves you to a different tier or rules that policy out.

As the application forms read when last checked. Insurers revise their questions, so the current form is what counts.

No-medical doesn’t mean no questions: these forms still ask about your health, and the answers are binding. And with some of the simplified plans, the caveat is that if you’re declined or rated elsewhere, they won’t put in the coverage after the fact, so the order you apply in matters.

The catch is size. The disadvantage could be that you may require more than one insurance company to meet your needs: for one client who wanted $800,000, that meant two simplified policies from two insurers, and whether it came from here or there, it’s still going to pay out 800. Compare no-medical life insurance quotes against a traditional offer before choosing, because several policies also mean several premiums and renewal dates.

Find out which outcome you’d get, before you apply

It’s better to have that feedback prior to applying than just applying and getting a rating. Your profile goes to two or three insurers first, with no name attached.

Talk to a broker directly: send the sport, how often you do it and when you last did.

Rating or Exclusion: Which to Accept, and Can It Come Off Later?

If you’ll keep doing the sport, the rating is usually worth paying, because it keeps that risk covered for your family. An exclusion keeps the regular price, but a death from that activity pays nothing, however rarely you do it, so take it only once you’ve decided your family could live with that gap. It fits someone winding down better than someone who simply goes rarely, because it doesn’t have to be permanent: on one file, instead of applying for a new policy, I asked the insurer to consider removing the exclusion once the client had stopped, and it came off.

Read the removal form before you sign it, though. That one included the wording “nor do I intend to”, and I wasn’t a fan of it: if he decided later he did want to backcountry ski again and something were to happen, my concern was they would dispute it.

A flat extra on life insurance is often permanent, which is the other side of the trade. When neither option sits right, one option is a small amount of simplified coverage, let’s say $250,000, with the remaining coverage as a traditional plan. It’s just hard to justify paying that much more for the entire amount.

Neither file was settled by the sport. They were settled by which insurer looked, what it was shown, and whether anyone went back to ask again, which is why I touch base once a year regardless and review the policy when a hobby winds down.

How to Lower What You Pay With a Risky Hobby

Ask before you apply, and give the insurer the full picture. I would do a preliminary inquiry with a few insurance providers to get feedback on how they would view the policy, which lets us shop several of them without going through a full application process. The application then goes to the one that fits, with the detail that supports it.

You don’t send it to ten. You usually only need two or three, because between the underwriting guidelines and experience of what each insurer actually does with a file, the shortlist is short. And since a preliminary isn’t an application, a cautious answer from one insurer isn’t a rating you then have to declare on the next.

He’d worried that a couple of guided wreck dives would count against him, and I sent the detailed log because it highlights how meticulous he is; not all divers would have that. None of this changes what you do. It changes how a high-risk file is presented and who sees it first, and the usual ways to lower a premium still apply on top.

Taking Up a Hobby After Your Policy Is Issued: What the Two-Year Window Means

You’re approved the day that you’re approved. If something changes down the road, like taking up skydiving a year after the policy is issued, that doesn’t void your policy: if it started after the policy was put in place, typically there is no negative impact. The caveat is that in the first two years, insurers do more of an investigation to see whether anything on the application was misstated.

Plans count, though. Most forms ask about the next 12 months, so a trip or a course that’s already booked goes on the application, even if you’ve never done the activity. Buying first and doing it later is fine only if your answers were true when you gave them, and where a form’s list doesn’t name your sport, I’d rather have it in there than not.

This is actually the only time in my career that I’ve seen a policy denied, and that was for lack of disclosure, on a policy less than two years in. After two years the law leans your way: Ontario’s Insurance Act, for example, says a failure to disclose or a misrepresentation doesn’t make a life policy voidable once it has been in force two years, in the absence of fraud.

Critical Illness, Disability and Accident Riders Are Stricter About Hobbies

Regular-price life cover doesn’t mean regular-price living-benefit cover. On critical illness and disability policies, an exclusion for the activity is the usual answer, even when the life policy came back clean.

An accidental death rider isn’t a way to insure the hobby either. With accidental death and dismemberment, it can sometimes create a false sense of security, where the client thinks they’re going to receive this extra benefit, but that depends on the circumstances of death or injury. You already have the coverage on the life policy.

So ask about each one separately before you apply. One client’s life policy excluded his climbing, and his disability policy then excluded both the climbing and the skiing, which is why I quote critical illness and disability insurance as their own decisions, not as add-ons to the life answer.

Hazardous Activities and Life Insurance: Common Questions

Most hazardous hobbies are insurable, and insurers are not all going to be created equal on them: some are more conservative on a given sport than others. That difference sits behind most of the answers below.