How Health and Lifestyle Affect Life Insurance Rates in Canada

Preferred rates, the discounted classes insurers keep for their healthiest applicants, are a difficult thing to get. Every insurer draws its own line, and in my experience a preferred offer is much rarer than a standard one.

So if your offer comes back at the standard rate (the regular price, with no discount and no surcharge), it doesn’t mean you aren’t healthy. It just means you didn’t qualify in their very best bracket. Since each insurer sets that bar differently, it pays to have an independent broker look at more than one insurer before you apply anywhere.

Skip to what applies to you

1. 01Does a healthy lifestyle lower your rate?
2. 02What insurers measure, and never ask
3. 03Exercise and weight loss
4. 04Getting a rating removed after you get healthier
   Paying extra for a health rating? Start here.
5. 05Vegan, vegetarian and keto diets
6. 06Smoking, vaping and cannabis
7. 07Alcohol, driving, hobbies and family history
8. 08Common questions

Does a Healthy Lifestyle Lower Life Insurance Rates in Canada?

A healthy lifestyle doesn’t lower your life insurance rate on its own. Truth be told, underwriting misses the mark on how healthy a person actually is: none of the applications I submit ask how often you exercise or what you eat. Your habits only count once they show up in something an insurer measures.

A client wrote to me after his nurse visit, annoyed, and I understood why. He trained most days and couldn’t see where any of that went on the application.

I told him he had a point. Insurers make assumptions based on certain criteria, and those criteria often miss the entire picture. You won’t change that on one application, so the useful question is where your habits do get counted.

Timing is the other catch. Your insurance is underwritten as of the time that you apply, so a routine you start next month can’t help an offer issued today. It can help later, though.

Where a healthier lifestyle can still move your price

If an insurer has already flagged you as a higher risk, it helps to know what insurers treat as high risk before you count on a new routine to fix it. Some of it, like blood pressure or nicotine, really can move. Some of it can’t.

What Canadian Insurers Actually Measure (and What They Never Ask)

Canadian insurers measure what your lifestyle leaves behind, not the lifestyle itself. Most of it comes from your application and, depending on your age and coverage amount, a short nurse visit with blood and urine tests. None of the applications I see ask about exercise or diet.

Not all fully underwritten plans are created equal when it comes to questions and how they’re asked. The same categories still turn up on every one I submit, though, and the nurse visit and lab work fill in the numbers.

A high blood pressure reading at the nurse visit doesn’t automatically mean a rating. Often the insurer asks for a recheck first, and your readings over time and any treatment history matter more than one number. It happens more than people think, and I tell clients not to be alarmed. If the readings stay high, how blood pressure and cholesterol get rated depends on the numbers and the insurer.

If you’re taking a medication, your blood pressure should fall in a normal range. For standard rates, that’s often enough. The preferred tiers are a different story.

Skipping the nurse visit doesn’t skip the checking. Many providers under age 50 will put a large amount of coverage in place without any sort of nurse visit, through accelerated underwriting. They still check the Medical Information Bureau (MIB), which holds coded findings from past applications to member insurers, so your answers need to line up with what’s already there.

How Exercise and Weight Loss Show Up on Your Application

Exercise and weight loss show up on your application through your height and weight, and through one question about how much you’ve lost in the past year. Insurers compare your build with their own charts, and those charts don’t agree with each other.

Not every company is equal as it relates to height and weight charts. Once you’re over a certain height and weight they’ll do a risk rating, and where that line sits varies by company. That’s why I keep the different insurers’ charts side by side.

Muscle doesn’t get a pass. None of the build charts I work with has an allowance for a muscular frame, so a gym regular and a desk worker at the same height and weight start on the same line.

Then there’s the weight-loss question. Lose a lot in a year and the application asks about it, because, as I put it to clients, they’re basically asking whether there’s some unknown reason you’ve lost all this.

So should you lose the weight first and apply later? I think that’s very risky advice. The risk for insurance may exist today, and there’s nothing wrong with finding the right coverage today at the most effective price and using it as a bridge to something cheaper down the road.

Things can happen at any time. A weight-related issue like sleep apnea can turn up while you wait, and the cost of putting coverage off is usually bigger than the rating you were trying to dodge.

Can a Life Insurance Rating Be Removed After You Get Healthier?

Often, yes. If you were rated, meaning charged extra for a health finding, and the cause is something you can change, like your weight or your blood work, many insurers will look at the rating again once better results have held for about a year. It isn’t automatic: you ask, they check you again, and they decide.

Here’s one file from start to finish. When the offer came in, I told the client the insurance company deems the risk slightly elevated and is giving an approval at 1.5 times the standard premium. The positive news is we do have an offer of coverage.

One detail did a lot of quiet work. We kept the original issue date, so he held the age he was priced at. If you change policies or start over, you’re priced at your age that day, which is why saving age matters more than people expect.

I recommend asking whenever the cause of a rating has genuinely changed, as there could be a significant savings. Just go in knowing how the review works.

And watch your timing on new prescriptions. In my experience, a brand-new cholesterol or blood pressure medication often means the insurer wants to see stability first, sometimes six months, sometimes a year. The medication itself is not the concern. It’s the underlying reasons.

If the offer in front of you is 1.5 times standard or more, price the alternative before you sign. At that level a no-medical plan can sometimes match or beat the rated premium. These simplified issue plans ask fewer health questions and usually skip the nurse visit, but they’re still underwritten and your answers are binding, so I price both before anyone signs.

Vegan, Vegetarian and Keto Diets: What Insurers See

Being vegan, vegetarian or on a keto diet doesn’t change your life insurance rate directly in Canada. Insurers don’t ask about your diet. They see its effects on your weight, cholesterol and blood sugar, the same as they would for anyone else.

How often you eat out isn’t asked either. A diet only matters to an insurer through the numbers it produces.

The exception is a diet your doctor put you on to manage a condition. In that case, the condition is what gets disclosed and assessed.

If your numbers sit close to a line, which insurer you apply to matters more than what you eat. Charts and limits differ from one insurer to the next, and that is something a broker can check before you apply.

How Smoking, Vaping and Cannabis Change Your Rate

Nicotine is the single biggest lifestyle factor in what you pay for life insurance in Canada. Using any nicotine in the past 12 months, vaping included, usually puts you at smoker rates, often two to nearly three times the non-smoker price for the same coverage. Cannabis is handled differently, and many insurers treat occasional use as non-smoker.

That fundamentally changes things on the cost side. It’s not the physical, it’s the cost. In the insurance world, you’re considered a smoker if you have smoked in the last year, and that covers vaping and other nicotine too.

When your application includes a lab test, that settles it. Cotinine is a byproduct of nicotine and is used by insurers to determine recent nicotine use, including smoking, vaping, or even nicotine replacement therapies such as patches or gum. Nicotine pouches count too, and every insurer asks about nicotine, so switching insurers doesn’t get around it.

If you smoke and plan to quit, I put in place the shortest term possible right now, because you’d have a smoker rate right now. It doesn’t make sense to lock in the longer term at the higher number.

Cannabis is where insurers disagree the most. The questions are how often, in what form, and whether tobacco is mixed in, and the same honest answer can land very differently depending on where the file goes.

So say exactly how often and how you use it. That one answer decides which insurer gets the file.

Alcohol, Driving, Hobbies and Family History: What Gets Asked

Alcohol, driving, hobbies and family history are asked on the application rather than measured, and each is judged on how often, how recently and how much detail you give. Moderate drinking, an ordinary driving record and everyday hobbies usually don’t change the price. Heavy drinking, a recent impaired driving charge or frequent high-risk activity can mean a rating, a flat extra or an exclusion, and sometimes a postponement or decline.

For anything unusual, I send a preliminary first, an anonymous check with an underwriter before you apply. It doesn’t include any of your information. I simply say, here’s a male this age, this is the profile, how would you underwrite this? It’s better to have that feedback prior to applying than just applying and getting a rating.

Family history plays a part in life insurance underwriting, but frankly is not as impactful as it would be on say a critical illness insurance policy. Where it shows up is the preferred tiers, and in my experience most offers come back at standard anyway. One client whose father had cancer before 65 missed the top tier by about $10 a month.

Insurers don’t usually love skydiving. Even so, two jumps in a year came back tentatively standard for one client. A third would have pushed us to simplified coverage.

If there’s a ticket, a hobby or a family diagnosis you’re unsure about, that’s exactly what a preliminary check is for. It gets you an answer before anything goes on your record, and our guide to life insurance for hazardous activities covers the hobby side in more depth.

Common Questions About Lifestyle and Life Insurance

Nicotine and your measurements move the price, habits on their own don’t, and almost everything else depends on which insurer sees the file. Here is how that plays out on the questions people ask most.

What to Do Before You Apply for Life Insurance

Check where your numbers land, apply for what’s affordable now, and revisit once better results have held. What I always say is it’s okay to put in place today what’s affordable and gives you some peace of mind.

I have had situations where a client has waited and unfortunately something else has come up health-wise that meant what they qualified for prior is no longer an option. So apply, put in place what makes sense today and reevaluate, because you never know what might change.

That’s also why I reach out to clients every year. If a health condition is already part of your picture, our guide to life insurance with a medical condition goes deeper.

Want to know where your numbers land before you apply?

Talk to a broker directly. I compare nearly 20 insurers and can run an anonymous preliminary check before anything goes on your record.

OntarioBritish ColumbiaAlbertaManitobaSaskatchewanNova ScotiaNew Brunswick