Menopause Life Insurance And How To Get Covered In 2024

Life insurance is increasingly important as you age. Still, it’s common knowledge that getting good life insurance coverage can seem harder as you age.

You need to strike a balance: do you opt for higher amounts of cover and the associated higher premiums, or do you go for lower, more sustainable premiums but lower amounts of cover? 

While this might seem like a fairly straightforward decision to make, there are always confounding factors. Age alone isn’t the only determinator of how affordable your life insurance cover will be. 

This leads many, especially women, to ask about various age-related changes to their bodies and lives and how they might affect their policies. Foremost among these questions is the topic of menopause.

As menopause is an unavoidable fact of life for women as they age, the question becomes whether it makes more sense to get menopause life insurance coverage before it begins or afterwards and whether menopause itself will affect your eligibility or rates for life insurance cover.

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Normal or Atypical Menopause

One of the biggest questions your life insurance provider will ask about menopause is whether or not your menopause is typical. 

Most women experience menopause in their early 50s – the average age is 51 years of age – but there are always outliers. In particular, there are a variety of non-standard causes of menopause, including tumors (both benign and otherwise), associated chemotherapy or radiotherapy, surgical interactions, physical damage, or other hormonal changes. 

As long as your experience with menopause falls within the typical average age range – even if it’s a year or two early or late – it isn’t likely to be considered atypical. 

Women with atypical menopause, usually much earlier than normal for a variety of reasons, will likely experience more issues getting life insurance coverage. However, this isn’t necessarily directly because of early menopause but rather the reason why it’s happening. 

Premature menopause as a side effect of radiation therapy for ovarian cancer will impact life insurance rates, but it’s more due to the cancer than the menopause.

Note: one increasingly common reason for atypical menopause is hormone replacement therapy or HRT. It’s important to know that HRT and a gender transition may impact life insurance rates; however, this is not due to anti-transgender discrimination. 

Rather, it’s because several factors involved in gender-affirming care, such as surgery, can impact life insurance. 

Additionally, biological and genetic markers that don’t change with hormones are still important for overall lifespan and the risk factors you may face for various diseases throughout your life. 

In most cases, however, your life insurance classification is unlikely to change significantly based on these factors.

Menopause brings with it a variety of symptoms, both physical and mental. You will likely see physical changes with periods, and your hormones will change as your ovaries stop producing estrogen and progesterone. 

This also often has side effects, including low moods, anxiety, self-esteem issues, depression, bad memory, difficulty concentrating, hot flashes, insomnia, headaches, weight gain and obesity, muscle aches, joint pain, and more. 

These systemic changes in the body can propagate throughout your systems and have widespread impacts, often detrimental.

Other than knowing whether or not your menopause is typical, are there other factors to consider?

Age in General

Perhaps the single most common factor for calculating life insurance rates for various levels of coverage is age. 

After all, everyone ages, and the older you are, the more likely you are to have health complications and the more likely you are to pass from those complications. Since life insurance is, in a sense, a gamble on your longevity, the riskier of a bet you are, the more you will need to pay for your cover.

Since menopause, in most cases, doesn’t begin until after the age of 50, you’re already in a semi-advanced state of ageing. 

You can still get life insurance coverage – in fact, over-50s life insurance coverage is among the most common kinds of life insurance – but it’s by necessity going to cost you a little more than the same cover would if you applied in your 40s, which will cost more than if you applied in your 30s, and so on.

Mental Health Challenges

Another factor that can have an impact – albeit usually a small one – is mental health. Unfortunately, over 50% of women going through menopause report feeling depressed by the changes to their body and the implications of those changes. 

Another 33% of women report having anxiety because of it. In some cases, these feelings are quite severe and can even lead to medications, therapy, or other treatment.

In most cases, mental health isn’t a huge factor in life insurance. There may be some associated increase in risk to the insurance provider, but this is generally small enough that it doesn’t impact your coverage. 

That said, if you have a history of severe mental illness or have, for example, attempted suicide in the past, it can have a greater potential impact.

Sadly, women in the UK and worldwide don’t get enough support. Menopause, despite being an unavoidable fact of life for women, can often be missed by medical professionals, misdiagnosed based on other symptoms, or even treated improperly. 

Poor treatment and misdiagnosis can lead to extraneous tests and medications, which can have a negative impact on overall quality of life.

Physical Changes and Risk Factors

The greatest change in your life insurance will come from the associated side effects and secondary issues caused by both age and menopause. 

Women going through and living after menopause are at greater risk of medical conditions such as:

• UTIs
• Migraines
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• High Cholesterol
• High Blood Pressure
• Obesity
• Osteoporosis
• Heart Disease

Again, though, these are often simply related to age rather than menopause itself. Men are at risk of many of the same factors at increasing rates as they age. So, it’s not necessarily a biological or gendered bias in life insurance cover here, though the associations can sometimes be strong. 

Can You Still Get Life Insurance Cover After Menopause?

Yes, of course. There is virtually no age or condition wherein you cannot get life insurance short of actually on your deathbed. 

No matter how old you are or what your overall health conditions are, as long as you aren’t imminently terminal, you’re likely able to get coverage from some provider or another. Many even offer guaranteed cover insurance plans, which as the name implies, guarantee your right to cover. 

The reality is that the older you are and the worse your health is, the more expensive cover will be. Some providers may even make it prohibitively expensive if your situation is bad enough, simply to disincentivise you from purchasing a plan they’ll more than likely have to pay out in short order. 

Even so, you can get quotes from top insurance providers and find something that works for you quickly and easily through our system. We have contacts with the UK’s top insurance providers and can get you quotes in minutes after you fill out a simple form with your information.

Should You Get Life Insurance Before, During, or After Menopause?

There are three distinct phases of menopause: the start, the progression, and life after menopause. Regarding life insurance, the three are slightly different; they would be before, during, and after.

So the question becomes, should you get life insurance preferably before, during, or after menopause?

The answer won’t surprise you: the earlier you get life insurance coverage, the better. The younger and healthier you are, the lower your rates are going to be, so you can lock in greater amounts of coverage for lower fees each month, with no issues in their way.

While the best option is to get life insurance coverage early before menopause begins, what happens if you’re already starting to feel the signs? Should you still apply for life insurance immediately, or should you consider waiting?

This one is a slightly trickier question to answer. It largely all comes down to whether or not you’re experiencing significant, life-altering changes with menopause or if it’s a relatively “light” incidence for you. 

Some women experience much greater symptoms than others, while some get off easily. In rare cases, menopause can last up to fifteen years, and the symptoms can be extreme. 

If you’re experiencing abrupt health issues like sudden diabetes, you may consider waiting in case they go away. 

Much like pregnancy, menopause can induce changes that, once they settle down and your body adjusts, can disappear. 

If you apply for life insurance coverage when experiencing these problems, they will negatively impact your life insurance. If you wait a bit, you will still need to report that you had them, but recovering from them will help make your case for lower premiums.

In almost all cases, it’s best to apply as soon as you can. You can always consider a readjustment if your health situation improves later. 

Can You Make a Claim on Your Life Insurance for Menopause?

In the vast majority of cases, a life insurance claim is only made by your beneficiary after your passing. You aren’t generally the person making the claim on your own life insurance cover. 

However, there are some circumstances where you may be able to make a claim while you’re still alive, receiving your payout early so that you can help prepare for your own end-of-life care or funeral preparations and take steps to arrange the protection of the money for your beneficiary. 

For example, you might have a young child and want to protect them with your payment via a trust rather than just giving the money to them; that can potentially be done with a payout early while you’re still alive.

The primary reason why you can make a claim early is if you’re diagnosed with a terminal illness and, despite modern medical science, you don’t have much time left. Terminal cancer and other illnesses are the most common cause of this early claim being accepted.

Unfortunately, as much as menopause often includes a variety of symptoms that make you feel like you’re dying, you aren’t actually dying, and menopause isn’t a terminal illness. 

Therefore, using menopause as the basis for a life insurance claim isn’t going to work. You would file the paperwork, the insurance provider would ask why, you would respond with menopause, and they would deny the claim.

There is one way that menopause can lead to a life insurance claim, but it’s also not before your passing. 

Since one of the symptoms of menopause is depression, and untreated depression can lead to a variety of issues, including suicidal ideation and tendencies, suicide is not completely out of the question. You aren’t the one making the claim in this case, of course. 

Also, many life insurance policies have riders that explicitly refuse to pay out during a suicide to prevent abuse of the system. This depends on the specific policy, so being informed is good.

How to Get the Best Life Insurance Cover in the UK

Here at Insurance Hero, we strive to match you up with the best possible quotes from the UK’s top insurance providers. We also make it easy. 

All you need to do is complete our survey and complete the form. In no time flat, you’ll have quotes from the top providers ready to go, where you can compare them and choose the one that best fits your needs.

If you have any questions or need help, we’re always standing by to assist. Feel free to reach out and contact us, whether by email or phone, and we’ll do anything we can to help you.