Life insurance and diving, an inside glimpse of underwriting guidelines

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I have a large life insurance policy. Does this mean that if I have a fatal diving accident that I won't be covered ? Thanks for posting this topic.
 
So, I'm not familiar with this company. I've actually never even heard of them. Are you able to see the rates for this coverage?

I would say that this is a pretty restrictive policy. It would have to appeal to those that almost never dive and don't ever dive deep. For most of the people I am around, this would never work. I've been insured with several companies but am pretty happy with DAN. Rates are cheap and they do cover tech, ccr, deep.

As far as commercial diving goes....
Those policies are written by true carriers that insure everything from gas stations and restaurants to contractors and hospitals. Commercial diving is just another construction company where the work place is hundreds of feet below. I've never sold one of those policies, but I have owned those policies as I used to own a comm dive company. Liability insurance really wasn't that much. Worker's Comp was insane.

I don't know if you know this, but if you have Worker's Comp in Florida and an employee gets hurt, he is legally NOT able to sue you. If you don't have Worker's Comp, he can sue the pants off of you. So liability is cheap, WC NOT CHEAP.
 
I totally need to wake up before I start reading/responding. Initially I thought I was on the liability thread. I just came back to this page and read that this is a life insurance thread. Okay, let me gather some less groggy thoughts.
 
I just spoke to my Life insurance agent. He says I would be covered. I hope he is right.
 
I have a large life insurance policy. Does this mean that if I have a fatal diving accident that I won't be covered ? Thanks for posting this topic.
In most states, NOT NY OR CA and a few others, if your policy is 2 years old, it doesn't matter how you die, the company has to pay. In some states, insurers are able to write into the contract that you can NEVER die in a plane crash as a private pilot, in a diving accident, racing accident, etc. For those people, I'd come to Florida to write your policy.
 
I just spoke to my Life insurance agent. He says I would be covered. I hope he is right.
I can look at your contract and tell you in 45 seconds.
 
As was explained to me, tech diving requires separate underwriting based on the activity. So it's not that you're uninsurable, but you don't qualify for the best rate. Many people don't for various reasons. I assume commercial policies are entirely separate.
So, as a commercial diver, I was completely uninsurable for Life Insurance. As a tech diver, I might as well be uninsurable. Some of you may remember that about a decade ago, I was able to get the actuaries of American National Insurance Company to look at the data for cave divers. We pulled everything we had from the NACD and NSSCDS and IUCRR to determine the fatality rates of cave divers. In the end ANICO did start writing life insurance on full cave divers. But the prices were still pretty high. Something like a flat extra of $5-7/thousand. So, if you have a $500k policy, you'd pay and extra $3500 per year just for being a cave diver (ON TOP OF THE NORMAL RATE)
 
Part of our problem is that we don't track the data. Actuaries don't have math to work with when it comes to tech diving.

In skydiving, every single jump is calculated. You could call any one of the skydiving centers in Florida and every single one of them could tell you how many people jumped last year, how many jumps those people had. How many people had a chute failure and how many people got seriously injured or killed.

Actuaries can then take that data and go, "Okay, 4500 people made 60,000 jumps in the state and for those 60,000 jumps 1 person died.

Scuba, how many people dove, how many dives did they make, how many of those dives involved an injury or death, how many of those deaths were a result of scuba or bad health? Phuck if I know? See the problem?
 
So, as a commercial diver, I was completely uninsurable for Life Insurance. As a tech diver, I might as well be uninsurable. Some of you may remember that about a decade ago, I was able to get the actuaries of American National Insurance Company to look at the data for cave divers. We pulled everything we had from the NACD and NSSCDS and IUCRR to determine the fatality rates of cave divers. In the end ANICO did start writing life insurance on full cave divers. But the prices were still pretty high. Something like a flat extra of $5-7/thousand. So, if you have a $500k policy, you'd pay and extra $3500 per year just for being a cave diver (ON TOP OF THE NORMAL RATE)

Question: if I'm a full cave diver and I gack myself driving my car to a dive site, would there be a payout?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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