If you are thinking about getting one of the recently-approved coronavirus vaccines — or if you’ve already gotten your first or second vaccination dose — you might be wondering whether getting the COVID vaccine will have any affect on your ability to get life insurance.
Can people be turned down for life insurance policies if they do not have the COVID vaccine? Will you be more likely to be approved for life insurance coverage if you’ve received a COVID vaccine? If you already have a life insurance policy, do you need to tell your insurer if you get vaccinated for COVID? Will your COVID vaccination affect your life insurance premiums?
In most cases, you do not need to provide your insurer with any information about your vaccination history. But the COVID vaccine, like everything else related to the coronavirus pandemic, has made everything just a little bit unprecedented. Because this vaccine might affect your lifespan, you might want to tell a potential insurer that you’ve already gotten the COVID vaccine — or ask whether getting the COVID vaccine would affect your eligibility for life insurance.
How do life insurance companies usually regard vaccines?
In general, vaccines are not considered in life insurance underwriting. This means that your life insurer does not evaluate your vaccination history before determining whether or not to issue you a policy. You don’t need to list your vaccines when you apply for life insurance online. If you decide you want medically-underwritten term life insurance for its affordable premiums and term-length flexibility, you won’t need to provide vaccine records during your life insurance medical exam.
It doesn’t come up during the process today.
That said, the COVID-19 vaccine might change at least one aspect of the process — and this change might help more people access affordable life insurance plans.
How could the COVID vaccine affect your life insurance eligibility?
If you have a pre-existing condition related to the coronavirus and its impact, it might also affect your ability to take out a life insurance policy while the pandemic is still alive. Some insurers have made decisions to limit access to policies during COVID because of the comorbidity risk.
This means that if you are a person who is at higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, such as a person with diabetes or heart disease, you might have more trouble getting life insurance coverage. But if you can prove that you have been vaccinated for COVID-19, insurers might be more likely to offer you a life insurance policy. The COVID vaccine might re-open coverage.
Because taking out a life insurance policy is one of the best things you can do to protect your loved ones — especially during a global pandemic — getting the COVID vaccine when you can, in order to increase your eligibility for an affordable life insurance policy, could be a smart move.
That said, there is no indication that insurers have begun using COVID vaccination status to make life insurance policy or premium decisions. This is all theoretical — and, as with many aspects of the pandemic, subject to change as we learn more about the coronavirus and the way it interacts with the available vaccines.
Does it matter which COVID vaccine you get?
Now that there are multiple COVID vaccines available, not to mention the potential for new vaccines to be approved in the future, does the vaccine you get have any affect on your life insurance eligibility status? If you get one of the first-ever mRNA vaccines, like the two-dose vaccines offered by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, will life insurers treat you differently than if you get a more conventional vaccine, like the one submitted for FDA approval by Johnson & Johnson?
There is no indication that the type of coronavirus vaccine you get will have any effect on your life insurance eligibility. Many public health experts are recommending you get whichever vaccine is available in your area — and that could be a good practice to follow, especially if you don’t have a preference for which vaccine you want.
Getting vaccinated for COVID-19 is the important part, after all.
For more information about Life Insurance call JCT Insurance Agency at (626)354-2000 or email jctfinancialsvc@gmail.com