What to know about how much life insurance costs
Thinking about how much life insurance costs
What works well
- A fixed specification makes quotes genuinely comparable.
- Guaranteed premiums remove future repricing risk.
- Younger applicants lock in the lowest rates of their lives.
What to watch
- Averages without sources cannot predict an individual quote.
- A cheaper quote usually means different terms somewhere specific.
- Reviewable premiums can rise sharply at review dates.
Why the honest answer is a method, not a number
Every circulated “average premium” hides a different mix of ages, smoking statuses and cover amounts, so it cannot predict your quote. The disciplined approach is to fix the specification first — sum assured, term, guaranteed premiums — then collect written quotes against that identical specification and compare them line by line. What the structure tells you without any figures: term assurance is the cheapest form of cover because a pay-out is possible rather than certain; whole of life costs multiples of term for the same sum because a pay-out is guaranteed; and smoking status is one of the largest single rating factors after age. No insurer publishes a comparable market-wide table of premiums by age band, so none is quoted here; the closest dated figure is Legal & General’s own published average of £26.33 a month (July 2026), which is a single insurer’s book rather than a market average.
Write down your exact specification, request quotes against it in writing, and keep each insurer’s document with its date — a quote without a date is not comparable. Whatever the specifics of how much life insurance costs, the discipline that protects your family is always the same: get the insurer’s position in writing, keep the documents with the policy, and make sure the people who would claim know the policy exists and where the paperwork lives.
What moves the price
Life insurance premiums are set at the outset from your age, your answers on health and lifestyle — smoking status is one of the largest single factors — the sum assured, the length of cover and the premium type. Guaranteed premiums stay fixed for the term; reviewable premiums can be re-priced by the insurer at set intervals, which makes a cheaper starting quote expensive later. Average premium figures circulate widely online, but an average built from different ages, health profiles and cover amounts cannot predict your quote — treat any average without a named source and a date as unusable. For scale rather than prediction, Legal & General published an average UK life insurance cost of £26.33 a month in July 2026, drawn from its own 2025 book. [2]
One genuine lever does exist beyond the cover design itself: the underwriting outcome. Two insurers can assess the same medical history differently, so written quotes against an identical specification — same sum assured, same term, same premium type — are the only honest comparison. Pay-out statistics matter when weighing price against reliability: ABI and GRiD data shows protection insurers paid a record £7.34 billion in 2023, equivalent to roughly £20.1 million a day. [1]
| Measure | Figure | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Total protection pay-outs, 2023 | £7.34 billion | Group and individual life, critical illness and income protection claims combined — a record year |
| Equivalent rate | £20.1 million per day | The daily flow of claim payments across the market |
| Individual policies | £4.85 billion / 275,000 claims | Claims paid on policies bought personally rather than through an employer |
| Average critical illness claim | £67,267 | The typical lump-sum pay-out on an individual critical illness policy |
- All protection claims (group and individual)£7.34 billion
- Individual policies only£4.85 billion
How to compare two quotes
- Fix the cover first: the amount, the term and whether premiums are guaranteed or reviewable.
- Ask for each quote in writing, with its date.
- Put the quotes side by side and mark every difference in terms before you look at price.
- Ask whether any exclusion or price increase was added because of your health answers.
In practice
Insurers treat you as a smoker if you have used any nicotine product in the last 12 months, and that includes vapes, patches and gum. Smoker rates are substantially higher. If you stop, many insurers will reconsider the premium once you have been nicotine-free for 12 months, but you have to ask, and they may ask for a test.
Related guides
- What life insurance is and how it works
- If a claim goes wrong: do life insurance policies pay out?
- Trusts, tax and the estate: life insurance in trust
Looking at cover with PremierPMI
PremierPMI is a specialist private medical insurance broker and the publisher of The Health Guide. If you want to talk through what this means for your own cover, you can start there.
Or, if you would rather start here, send an enquiry and PremierPMI will contact you.
Common questions
Why can’t an average premium figure predict what I will be quoted?
Does a cheaper reviewable premium cost less over the whole term?
How should I compare quotes from different life insurance providers?
Sources and methodology
- [1] Association of British Insurers and GRiD, reported by Cover Magazine. “£7.34bn paid out by protection insurers in 2023”. View source(opens in a new tab)Primary source
- [2] Legal & General. “Average cost of life insurance”. View source(opens in a new tab)Primary source
We cite primary sources wherever possible. Read about our sourcing methodology.
Andrew Buscu
PMI Specialist & Copywriter, PremierPMI
- Whole-of-market private medical insurance adviser
- Claims and renewal specialist
Andrew is a member of the private medical insurance advisory team. He gathers detailed client requirements and liaises with insurers to arrange tailored quotes across the whole UK market, guiding clients from first quote through to claims and renewal. In one case he reduced a client renewal premium from £36,000 to £11,520 without reducing cover.
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Parvoz Haydarov
Founder, PremierPMI
- Founder of PremierPMI
- Whole-of-market private medical insurance
Parvoz founded PremierPMI as a specialist private medical insurance brokerage. He sets the direction of the firm — insurer relationships, service standards, compliance culture and the editorial bar for everything published under the PremierPMI name — and personally reviews the largest corporate and family cases before they go to market.
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