Tramping and Life Insurance

Has anyone had any recent (or otherwise) experience with life insurance policies and outdoor activities? We've been looking around, and at least one of the policies (underwritten by Sovereign although it was ASB selling it to us) had specific exclusions adound adventure sport activities, but explicitly included mountaineering. Basically if you died doing something like that, they wouldn't pay out. I asked the salesperson, who really wasn't sure. He was just reading the policy as written over the phone, and I'd suspect the distinction isn't specifically written down anyway. In my own mind, tramping and mountaineering are normally different things, with mountaineering being significantly higher risk, but there's sometimes an implicit overlap given where tramping sometimes goes. Also, occasionally I do strap on crampons and do things slightly more alpiney, even if not technical. Without wanting to evoke memories of any bad experiences, but I'm curious if anyone's been through this, and see how any life insurance companies interpret tramping deaths compared with mountaineering deaths. Are there specific policies out there which take mountains clearly into account?
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Thanks. Out of interest, though, does the NZAC insurance actually cover climbing in New Zealand? I already knew of it but my impression was that it's basically a ramped up travel insurance for alpinists rather than life insurance, and so would be more focussed on things like SAR op charges, medical expenses, personal liability and repatriotism rather than things like mortgage payments and income protection.
NZAC don't do life insurance, they do provide overseas travel insurance. Its all through ACE insurance. https://alpineclub.org.nz/climb/insurance I haven't looked into life insurance recently, but one broker tried to sell me some through OnePath. Basically tramping (no use of technical climbing equipment) was covered but they would only cover NZ mountaineering with a considerable increase in the premium. I think offhand this mountaineering clause would also cover me if I died climbing overseas peaks unto 6000m but I can't quite remember.
Just got life insurance through https://www.chubb.com/nz-en/life.html. As of now (10/23) they don't have exclusions or loading for Tramping/Bouldering/Scrambling/Abseiling/Mountaineering/Ice Climbing, so it was significantly cheaper than other options
3 deleted posts from WilliamRodriguez, aparentlink, Naresg6776
if you're on steep terrain thats not on an official track, you might be getting close to their interpretation of mountaineering... if its a track you can walk the whole way, you should be safe... mountaineering usually involves a lot of hand over hand and or ropes ice axe crampons... gets a bit vague with places like ruapehu, and taranaki, given taranaki's fatality rate you might be risking it there... the insurance company should be elaborating
Standard insurance. Keep the definitions as vague as possible and argue later if necessary. Arguments normally start as "Our actuary and team of lawyers say this means" Think car insurance. Most car insurance says on road only unyet 80% of beaches are road. Ever tried to claim after driving on the beach getting stuck and the tide came in?
1 deleted post from jd9925044
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Forum The campfire
Started by izogi
On 14 December 2014
Replies 14
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