Insurers treating vaping the same as tobacco smoking

Insurance companies are starting to treat vaping the same as tobacco smoking when assessing premiums for life insurance and mortgage protection policies, reports The Sunday Times.

Aviva and Zurich have confirmed they have changed their approach to e-cigarettes in the past year. Smokers typically have to pay up to twice as much as non-smokers for life insurance, because half of all smokers die from a smoking-related disease.

Aviva said it changed its policy on e-cigarettes last year due to “uncertainty on the long-term impact” of vaping, the newspaper reported. The insurer is to continue to monitor the issue.

Zurich confirmed it had changed its approach to vaping after consultation with reinsurers. It said the approach was based on “some research pointing to a high frequency of dual use of e-cigarettes and normal cigarettes”.

A number of mortgage brokers said lower premiums for vapers were no longer available in the market.

Several insurers, including the AA, had classified users of e-cigarettes as non-smokers if they had not smoked tobacco in the previous year. Zurich used to charge e-cigarette users more than non-smokers but not as much as tobacco smokers.

Nick McGowan, a mortgage broker with Lion.ie, said savings for vapers who did not smoke tobacco were no longer available. “The reinsurers changed their stance due to the lack of long-term data. They’ve taken a cautious approach,” he said.

John Geraghty, chief executive of LA Brokers, said he was not aware of any companies offering lower premiums for e-cigarette users any more. “Most life insurers ask applicants have they smoked cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco or used nicotine replacement products or e-cigarettes in the past 12 months,” he said. If the answer is yes, their premiums are loaded.

Joe Dunne, managing director of VIP electronic cigarettes, which has more than 20 stores in Ireland, said it was regrettable that insurance companies had made decisions based on “unfounded fears”. “The research is clear — vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking tobacco,” he said.

This view is accepted by Public Health England, but the HSE is more cautious, saying it does not advise using e-cigarettes to give up tobacco because “we don’t yet know how safe they are”.

The Sunday Times reported that Dunne claimed that recent coverage of vaping was based on a misunderstanding of US reports linking vaping to deaths. “It has since been clarified that those people were smoking cannabis, so it’s unfair to take action against e-cigarettes based on those deaths. It’s like banning alcohol because of the effects of moonshine,” he said.

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