UKC

Given that I can't be the first person to come up against this....any advice on finding mortgage protection for climbers? The posts I searched through on here all seemed a good 10 years out of date at least...

My partner and I have been declined by the supplier our mortgage provider recommended to us. I've gone to Summit Financial Services, and whilst they are excellent, the amount for decreasing mortgage life insurance cover is pretty eye watering....just want the other to be able to afford to pay off the remaining mortgage and not lose the house in the event of the worst.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on who they have used? /what they have done? As soon as you mention ice climbing that seems to tip them over the edge....

I was thinking about BMC insurance and then just getting a standard policy that excludes climbing for the life insurance... I've got an annual policy alpine and ski but you only get £5K in the event of death, which suffice to say won't pay off the mortgage....

My partner gets some perks through work which would broadly cover a sensible amount of it, but in my line of work those sort of perks just don't exist....

Any thoughts appreciated! Based on the premiums they all seem convinced we're going die....

I was in your position 10 to 15 years ago. I use a combination of work life insurance and summit financial. BMC travel insurance only provides travel insurance and will not provide the cover needed that life insurance or 

Summit financial were the best option and as far as I'm aware nothing has really changed.

What you need to make sure is that your not over insuring yourself. From both a payout and risk factor. 

Questions to ask yourself are:

• Do you go ice climbing every weekend or is it something you do once a year.
• Is it better described as mixed climbing rather than ice climbing?
• Do you need life insurance and critical illness insurance? Critical illness is the more expensive one and covers your for injuries. Where as life insurance only covers you for death.
• What would your plan be on the worse case scenario? Doesn't need to be extensive, but an idea would help 

I've never quite understood why (as everyone seems to tell me theirs does) but my mortgage provider doesn't actually require me to take life insurance, so I haven't bothered.  They have never even required it from day one when I didn't have much equity.  The only insurance they have ever required is a buildings policy, and even then they've never asked for evidence of it other than when I first took the mortgage out (though I do have one, as not being insured if your house burnt down would just be mad).

Different if you have dependents, though.  But if you don't have any kids you could just shop around mortgage providers and find one that doesn't require it for you.

I'm with the Nationwide by the way.

If of course you want it by choice to make your partner's lot easier if you were to sadly be involved in a serious accident, then fair enough, though, ignore my suggestion

What are you protecting against. Death? Accident/incapacity?

Yes it is an expensive cost and Summit are probabaly the best option.

My Dad use to joke these things as if you are killed/dead it really is not your problem to worry about! He use to say this with a big grin on his face. Ultimately your partner can always in the worse case sell the house and move on.So most people would rather do that as the back stop than pay the premium.

The biggest financial  risk is probably not death but having a serious injury and adapting to that.And the cost of that insurance is also for most people prohibitively costly.

The other way is to look for a job/retrain etc  where there is life assurance etc provided.

The OP (who can obviously speak for herself) has a partner. In that context, if the mortgage is only affordable via two incomes, then seeking protection against the loss of one of those is understandable.

What climbing activities do you do, and to what level?

When I first got a mortgage I found the same issue. Summit FS were expensive, a lot more than a regular policy. A large chunk of that is their commission, which you'll be paying for the life of the policy. I found a website via MSE that charged about £30 to get quotes from insurers directly, with no advice. You have to do all the work yourself, but you save thousands in ongoing commission. You do have to be confident that you've got it right though. In the end I found a company that treated rock climbing up to HVS as no special risk, so I paid the same as a standard policy! The best bit was, with an ongoing life policy the risk was assessed at the start, and an increase in risk later on wouldn't change the premium.

Obviously, if you do go down this route you are on your own, with no one to claim compensation from if you misunderstood the small print. But worth looking into if you are confident.

Yep, this is what we were hoping to achieve! 

Thanks to all for the replies, through some digging we've managed to work out that I can be added to my partners critical illness illness cover so we're going to go with that for now, and park the life insurance for the time being, with the back up being to downsize. 

Wanted to make sure we weren't missing any other options other than Summit, so useful to know that's the go to.

Retraining after 6 years at vet school for better job perks isn't on the cards at this stage haha....

Cheers again all.

Thank you for the reply, not sure I would feel confident taking this on but appreciate the suggestion.

Trad climbing up to E3 (rarely) currently...winter climbing, ice climbing, alpine climbing, etc etc....so wouldn't be able to get a standard policy where it doesn't add extra I wouldn't imagine....

I don't know if this helps? 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/critical-illness-cover/

I have used Summit since buying my first house 17 years ago.

At the time, i just needed Critical Illness cover (if I died, it didn't matter as I had no dependents, but I wanted to be able to pay off the mortgage if I was severely ill or injured). My mortgage broker provided a quote. I noticed it excluded exciting activities such as climbing. He got a new quote: the price went up a lot, but I still wouldn't be covered if I was injured whilst climbing!!!

So I went to Summit, who arranged a policy for a price somewhere between the two previous quotes.

Since then I've married and we've bought a house together. We have separate policies, arranged via Summit, that cover us for critical illness or death. It's around £50/month for each of us.  The terms of husband's policy are not quite as good as mine (he is excluded from mine because he regularly climbs above E3).  So yes it is expensive, but you have to weigh up whether it's worth it.

I don't think our mortgage provider requires that we have life or critical illness insurance. But for us, we don't want to end up homeless because we can't pay the mortgage due to severe illness or one of us dying for whatever reason.

Summit are good because they understand the different varieties of climbing, they will talk grades with you (hence the difference in our policies). We have a check-in every couple of years or so, when they ask whether we're still doing the same things or has anything has changed, and then they see whether they can improve the policy for either of us.

Thanks so much for the reply Becky. Summit have indeed been great giving a quote, and I have income protection already taken out with them.  I'm in a similar position where my partner regularly climbs above E3. (I'm more up to E3 thus far.) 

£50 per month for both sounds very reasonable, unfortunately we've been quoted £140 per month for both which is really quite high! Can't fault the service from Summit, they have been excellent, just the cost is a lot....

Both and each may well have different meanings!

Good point - I read it one way but it could be the other!

That sounds a lot! I pay around £50 per month (through summit) for E3, alpine up to 6000m and UIAA 6 and winter stuff for mortgage protection and critical illness.

I was told it really ramps up at E4+ allthough i think it's the case if you climb the odd E4 it's OK.  I always wondered how regular E4 climbers afforded it. 

The trick is clearly to get shitter.

I'm way ahead of the curve there.....

Sorry if I wasn't clear: it's about £50 per month each (I can't remember the exact figures).  Definitely not into the £60 each range. However I suspect the total amount depends in part on how much you need it to cover - having a bigger mortgage to pay off will mean a bigger premium.

Husband's policy won't pay out quite as much (I can't remember the details) as mine - his is an older policy, whereas I was able to access one with better terms due to being a shitter climber.