Fitness and activity trackers – such as Fitbits, Apple Watches and Garmin trackers – have surged in popularity in recent years, with many people in the UK using them as a form of motivation to keep active and to measure their health improvements.

But your health tracker isn’t just a cool bit of tech to help you reach or maintain a good level of fitness, it could actually help you cut the cost of your life insurance premiums.

Here’s how you could get cheaper life insurance by simply linking a health tracker to your policy.

Health and life insurance: Impact of health on life insurance premiums

The cost of life insurance is based on how much of a risk it would be to insure you, in the eyes of the provider. To evaluate that risk, they take into account your:

• Age
• Previous or current medical conditions
• Health
• Smoking tendencies
• Desired level of cover

These will all be contributing factors as to how much your life insurance costs, but there are some things that you can improve upon for cheaper premiums – such as your health.

As a general rule of thumb: the healthier you are, the cheaper your life insurance premiums are likely to be.

Evidence has proved that healthier people are less likely to be diagnosed with an unexpected illness or condition – such as heart disease – making you less a risk to life insurance companies.

150 minutes of physical activity per week can add almost 3½ years to a person’s life, according to recent research, a figure that life insurance companies take into account. As a result, those who make the effort to maintain a healthy lifestyle are often rewarded with cheaper premiums.

But if you’re fit and healthy, or if you’re making an effort to improve your health, how can you prove it to your insurance provider? It was near-enough impossible until recently, but now, activity trackers offer a solution!

Cheaper life insurance with activity trackers

Certain life insurance providers in the UK allow policyholders to link their smart-watch or activity tracker to their policy, providing those who reach certain activity targets with discounted premiums and perks such as high-street vouchers.

Read more: How to Get Cheaper Life Insurance Premiums

Vitality health tracker

A leader in life insurance policies with activity trackers is Vitality, which even offers its customers discounted activity trackers to link to their policies, including Apple Watch, Garmin, Polar and Fitbit.

Policyholders are encouraged to be more active and are rewarded with ‘Vitality Points’ when they reach certain targets. The more points you build up, the more rewards you will get (gym memberships, free Starbucks coffees, etc.) and the cheaper your premiums will become.

Benefits of activity trackers and life insurance

When you link an activity tracker with your life insurance policy, you benefit in a variety of ways.

• You get healthier and physically fitter
• The cost of your life insurance might drop
• You receive discounts and freebies (from Vitality and certain providers)
• And for your provider: you become less of a risk to insure!

What’s not to like? It’s a win-win for everyone.

Read more: The Benefits of Life Insurance

Life insurance quotes at Quick Quote

If you’re looking to take out life insurance – or if you want an indicative quote of how much a policy could cost – simply complete the quick quote form below and in less than 2 minutes you will have your indicative quote from top UK providers  and will have taken the first step towards protecting what matters most – to you.