Life Insurance for Skydivers

Last Updated: May 2020

Most skydivers want to jump out of a plane without a parachute when they find out how expensive life insurance can be for them.

It doesn’t have to be expensive if you find an agent who can think outside the box and has experience in insuring skydivers. You just need the right company and sometimes the right strategy to find the right high-risk life insurance policy.

In this article, we will explain what to expect in the life insurance marketplace and a couple of cost-effective strategies to purchase life insurance for skydivers.

Can You Get Life Insurance as a Skydiver?
Underwriting: What Life Insurance Companies Will Ask About Your Skydiving
How to Apply for Life Insurance as a Skydiver

Life Insurance is Boring. Let’s Get To The Root Of It! Here are the key takeaways…

You can be approved for life insurance if you skydive. The number of skydives you participate in per year will ultimately determine how much your premium will be inflated. You can also consider purchasing two life insurance policies. One that excludes skydiving and one that does not exclude skydiving.

Can You Get Life Insurance as a Skydiver?

First of all, yes skydivers can get life insurance. You pay more than those who don’t skydive in the form of a flat extra.

Currently, the most competitive life insurance companies have categorized skydivers as the following:

50 or fewer jumps per year – $2.50 flat extra
50 or more jumps per year – $5.00 flat extra
100+ jumps per year – $7.50 flat extra

Most of you are now wondering what a flat extra is. It’s an extra charge per $1,000 of life insurance.

For example: Let’s say you’re a 40-year-old male looking for $500,000 of coverage at Standard rates for 20 years. Your premium, if you didn’t skydive, would be $750 per year.

Being a skydiver and using a flat extra of $2.50 per $1,000 it would add an extra $1250 per year ($2.50 x 500) to your policy to make it a total of $2,000 per year.

A massive hike in premiums!

If the price is an issue, consider this strategy.

Purchase two policies, one that excludes skydiving and one that doesn’t.

This will bring down the cost of life insurance as well. Using the same example as above, we purchase $250k with the skydiving exclusion and $250k that covers skydiving.

The total premium would be $1,467 ($421 for $250k of coverage with the skydiving exclusion and $1,046 for $250k that covers skydiving). This is a savings of over 25%.

Your beneficiaries will only receive one death benefit of $250k in the event you pass while skydiving, but they’ll get both benefits in any other circumstance.

Underwriting: What Life Insurance Companies Will Ask About Your Skydiving

Every life insurance company will view your skydiving differently. Above we gave you the flat extras based on a best-case scenario, but most life insurance companies will actually have higher flat extras for these types of high-risk activities.

We’ve surveyed all the top-rated life insurance companies for our clients and we’ll categorize them below by how many jumps per year.

50 jumps per year or less (assuming you’re a club member and not an instructor):

$2.50 flat extra: Assurity, AXA, Banner, Fidelity, John Hancock, Prudential
$3.00 flat extra: American General, Genworth, ING, Lincoln Benefit, Lincoln Financial, MetLife, Minnesota Life, Mutual of Omaha, Nationwide, Principal, Protective, SBLI, Transamerica.

*Non-Club members are a $5 flat extra with everyone listed above.

51-100 jumps per year will be a $5 flat extra.
100-200 jumps per year (assuming you’re not an instructor) will be a $7.50 flat extra.
200+ jumps per year (assuming you’re a club member and not an instructor) will be a $10 flat extra with some companies. Non-club members will be a decline everywhere

Base jumping, stunts, experimental, and record attempts are all additional factors into the equation. Most companies will decline, but we’ve had some successful cases get through underwriting.

If you’re interested in excluding skydiving from coverage (and avoid the flat extra), these companies will do that: American General, Banner Life, Lincoln Benefit, MetLife, Nationwide, and Principal.

Here are two common questions we get asked often:

If I already have life insurance and picked up skydiving after the coverage went in force, will I still be covered? Yes. (Now don’t let it lapse!)
If I went skydiving once or twice in the past with no plans to go again, will I have to be rated as a skydiver? No. Make sure you disclose this to your agent though. It needs to be documented on the application.

How to Apply for Life Insurance as a Skydiver

Some companies base their flat extras off of “Preferred” health classification and others base their flat extras off of “Standard” (more expensive). Without this information, you won’t be able to know the best rates.

That’s where we come in. We’ll put this whole puzzle together and find the lowest life insurance rates you can qualify for as a skydiver.

If you’re a skydiver and looking for life insurance, we recommend you work with an experienced agent who has helped skydivers like yourself before.

As you can see, we specialize in life insurance for skydivers and have some creative options. We’ve surveyed the market to make sure your life insurance rates are as affordable as possible.

We encourage you to leverage this knowledge to secure the cheapest life insurance policy available for your specific skydiving risk. Please call us or fill out our quote request form and we’ll call you.