If you have a hobby like this, allow additional time and energy and get insurance quotes from several carriers. Something like snowboarding is (or used to be?) treated seriously by some insurances and not by others. I don't know how dangerous rock climbing is, but it seems kind of similar--the kind of things that some will use to increase premium and some might ignore.
Given the circumstances, no doubt you (OP) made the right call, given the timing of the deal. But you could still might be able to find and switch to a more permissive/equally-good insurance policy down the line at some point. Might take a couple years to get this done, of course.
I can quote fatality figures at you, but I'm afraid I can't transform that into useful statistics. For the most part, you have a lot of control over your level of acceptable risk in climbing. If you want to top-rope in the gym with a sober partner, you experience a much greater hazard driving to the gym than actually climbing. Free-soloing El Cap in the nude is another story. The estimates I've seen find the risk of serious injury to be far less than that of playing high school football.
In most of the insurance policies I've seen, payout is typically refused for fatalities over 6000m or 7000m. While I haven't purchased key person insurance, I've never had a problem with buying a hazardous activity rider.
Rock climbing will always give you a rating (bigger premium) if you do it with any kind of frequency. Snowboarding, while somewhat dangerous, is not as deadly and the underwriting has adjusted.
Don't even mention rock climbing in your insurance application. At my last company we got key man insurance on one of the founders. He had done rock climbing in the past and might do it in the future, but it had been 3-4 years. Nonetheless he included it on the list of activities the questionnaire asks about. Next thing you know a simple process was drawn out over months and his premium was higher even than a smoker.
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If you have a hobby like this, allow additional time and energy and get insurance quotes from several carriers. Something like snowboarding is (or used to be?) treated seriously by some insurances and not by others. I don't know how dangerous rock climbing is, but it seems kind of similar--the kind of things that some will use to increase premium and some might ignore.
Given the circumstances, no doubt you (OP) made the right call, given the timing of the deal. But you could still might be able to find and switch to a more permissive/equally-good insurance policy down the line at some point. Might take a couple years to get this done, of course.
I can quote fatality figures at you, but I'm afraid I can't transform that into useful statistics. For the most part, you have a lot of control over your level of acceptable risk in climbing. If you want to top-rope in the gym with a sober partner, you experience a much greater hazard driving to the gym than actually climbing. Free-soloing El Cap in the nude is another story. The estimates I've seen find the risk of serious injury to be far less than that of playing high school football.
In most of the insurance policies I've seen, payout is typically refused for fatalities over 6000m or 7000m. While I haven't purchased key person insurance, I've never had a problem with buying a hazardous activity rider.
Are you sure you did enough shopping around?
Edit: For any climbers in the audience, I'd like to encourage you to join the American Alpine Club. (http://www.americanalpineclub.org/benefits/)
Rock climbing will always give you a rating (bigger premium) if you do it with any kind of frequency. Snowboarding, while somewhat dangerous, is not as deadly and the underwriting has adjusted.
Don't even mention rock climbing in your insurance application. At my last company we got key man insurance on one of the founders. He had done rock climbing in the past and might do it in the future, but it had been 3-4 years. Nonetheless he included it on the list of activities the questionnaire asks about. Next thing you know a simple process was drawn out over months and his premium was higher even than a smoker.