Life Insurance With Risky Hobbies in Australia: Motorbikes, Diving, Aviation and More
Insure Me For LifeAR 1244847 of Consilium Advice Australia Pty Ltd, AFSL 246623
10 min read
How Australian life insurers assess hazardous pursuits like motorbike riding, scuba diving, aviation and climbing: the difference between hobby and occupation ratings, why outcomes range from standard terms to exclusions or loadings, and how a broker tests insurer appetite first. General advice only.
General Advice Only
This is general advice only and does not take into account your individual circumstances.
Please read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) before making a decision.
Consider seeking personal advice from a licensed financial adviser.
Insure Me For Life is Authorised Representative Number 1244847 of Consilium Advice Australia Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services Licence 246623.
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Life Insurance With Risky Hobbies in Australia: Motorbikes, Diving, Aviation and More
Riding a motorbike on weekends, diving, flying, climbing: none of these automatically rules out cover. Outcomes range from standard terms to loadings or exclusions depending on the activity, how often and at what level you do it, and the insurer's appetite. What a hazardous pursuit does change is the underwriting conversation, because insurers price risk and some pursuits carry more of it. This guide explains how Australian insurers actually assess hobbies, how that differs from the way jobs are rated, the realistic range of outcomes, and how to find the insurer whose appetite fits your pursuit before you apply anywhere.
General Advice Only
This is general advice only and does not take into account your individual circumstances.
Please read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) before making a decision.
Consider seeking personal advice from a licensed financial adviser.
Insure Me For Life is Authorised Representative Number 1244847 of Consilium Advice Australia Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services Licence 246623.
Can you get life insurance with a risky hobby?
In most cases, yes. Hazardous pursuits are standard territory for Australian life insurance underwriting: application forms ask about them, insurer underwriting guidelines address them, and underwriters assess them every week. The realistic question is rarely "can I get cover" and almost always "on what terms, and from which insurer".
Three things decide the answer:
The activity itself. Recreational scuba diving and cave diving are different conversations. So are club motorcycling and motor racing.
The qualifiers. How often, at what depth or height, how many hours a year, with what qualifications, competitively or recreationally. Insurers assess pursuits at this level of detail, not by the activity's name alone.
The insurer. Underwriting guidelines differ. The same disclosed pursuit can come back at standard terms from one insurer, with a loading from a second, and with an exclusion from a third.
That third point is the practical heart of this guide: with a hazardous pursuit, which insurer you apply to matters more than almost anything else you control.
How is a hobby different from a high-risk occupation?
Life insurers assess what you do for a living and what you do for fun through different mechanisms:
Occupation sets your occupation rating, which drives base premiums and what cover types are available, especially for TPD and Income Protection. A roofer and an accountant start from different rating classes before health enters the picture. Our high-risk occupations guide covers how job ratings work.
Pursuits are asked about separately, and their outcomes are typically activity-specific: an exclusion or loading attached to the pursuit, with the rest of the policy priced off your occupation and health as normal.
The distinction matters in both directions. A desk worker who races motorbikes is not priced as a professional rider; equally, a benign occupation does not launder a hazardous pursuit out of the assessment. And where an activity is part of the job itself (a diving instructor, a commercial pilot), it is assessed through the occupation, which is a different and usually more significant conversation than a hobby disclosure.
How do insurers assess motorbikes, diving, aviation and climbing?
There is no single market-wide rulebook: each insurer maintains its own underwriting guidelines for pursuits, and several publish adviser tables listing activities with tiered outcomes by qualifier. What is consistent across the market is the shape of the assessment:
Motorbike riding. Ordinary road riding on a licence is generally not treated as a hazardous pursuit at all. The underwriting questions start where the risk profile changes: racing, competition and track events are the classic dividing lines.
Diving. Recreational scuba questions typically cover depth, frequency, qualifications and the kind of diving done. Deeper, technical, cave or solo diving moves the assessment into different territory than shallow recreational dives with a buddy.
Aviation and aerial sports. Flying as a passenger on commercial airlines is not an issue. For private flying and aerial sports, outcomes commonly turn on annual flying hours along with the kind of flying involved, so the same label can produce quite different terms at different hours. Precise answers about hours and activity type matter more here than almost anywhere else on the form.
Climbing and mountaineering. Questions distinguish indoor and outdoor climbing, heights and grades, use of ropes and protection, and expedition mountaineering, with outcomes tiered accordingly.
The common thread: insurers underwrite the qualifiers, not the hobby's name. Which is good news, because it means the moderate version of an activity is frequently insurable at standard terms, and it also means your disclosure should be precise. "Diving: yes" invites the worst-case reading; "open water certified, recreational dives to 18 metres, a dozen dives a year" gives the underwriter something to say yes to.
Because guidelines differ and change, the current answer for any specific activity profile comes from the insurer's own underwriting assessment, and each insurer's PDS governs what its policies exclude. Where a policy carries a pursuit exclusion, the exclusion's exact wording in the PDS and policy schedule is what counts at claim time.
Loadings, exclusions, declines: what outcomes are possible?
When a disclosed pursuit attracts attention, the realistic outcomes are:
Standard terms. The pursuit at your stated level sits within the insurer's ordinary appetite. Common for the moderate versions of most activities.
A loading. An extra premium, usually a percentage, in exchange for the pursuit being fully covered. You pay more; claims arising from the activity are claims like any other.
An exclusion. The policy proceeds at standard pricing but will not pay for claims arising from the named pursuit. Everything unrelated to the activity remains covered.
A decline. The insurer is not prepared to offer the cover applied for. This is the least common outcome and, importantly, it is one insurer's answer, not the market's.
Where both are on the table, the loading-versus-exclusion choice is a genuine decision: a loading buys certainty about the activity at a running cost, while an exclusion keeps the premium down but leaves the pursuit uncovered. Which trade reads better depends on how central the activity is to your life and what the rest of the market is offering, which is exactly the comparison a panel quote surfaces.
Find the insurer whose appetite fits your pursuit
The same hobby can get standard terms from one insurer and an exclusion from another. Insure Me For Life compares AIA, Zurich, TAL, OnePath, ClearView, NEOS, Encompass, Acenda and Futura, with no ownership tie to any panel insurer. General advice only.
Yes, when the application asks, and it will. Applicants have a duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation: answer the insurer's questions accurately, to the best of your knowledge. Pursuits questions are part of every retail application, and they are as binding as the health questions.
The case for disclosing properly is practical, not just legal:
A disclosed pursuit is assessed in the open. The insurer may offer standard terms, apply a loading or exclusion, or occasionally decline, and whatever terms it does offer are terms it cannot later walk back on the basis of non-disclosure.
An undisclosed pursuit is a silent defect in the policy. If a claim arises in connection with an activity that a question covered and the answer omitted, the claim, and potentially the policy, is at risk at exactly the moment your family needs it to work.
Non-disclosure does not even save money honestly. A premium quoted on incomplete answers is not the real price of your cover; it is a number that will not survive claim-time scrutiny.
Precision helps you here. The qualifiers are what underwriters price, so accurate detail about frequency, depth, hours and level routinely produces better outcomes than a vague answer that gets read conservatively. If you are unsure what a pursuits question is asking, ask; translating underwriting questions is bread-and-butter broker work.
How do you find the insurer with appetite for your pursuit?
Insurer appetite for pursuits genuinely varies, and it is not printed on any comparison chart. Two tools do the finding:
A panel quote. One set of details compared across many insurers shows the pricing spread. Insure Me For Life compares across 9 insurers: AIA, Zurich, TAL, OnePath, ClearView, NEOS, Encompass, Acenda and Futura.
A broker-arranged pre-assessment. For a pursuit you suspect is non-standard, a broker can put a de-identified summary (the activity, its qualifiers, the cover contemplated) to insurers before any formal application is lodged. The responses show which insurers have appetite and on roughly what terms. Because no application exists, a discouraging answer leaves no trace, whereas a formal decline becomes part of your insurance history and must be disclosed on future applications when asked.
The pre-assessment route is particularly worth discussing for aviation and aerial sports, technical diving, competition motorsport and expedition-level climbing, where the spread between insurers tends to be widest. The sequence that avoids the avoidable bad outcome is: describe the pursuit precisely, test appetite de-identified, then apply once to the insurer whose terms fit. Our underwriting process guide covers what happens from there.
Frequently asked questions
Will a hobby exclusion make the rest of my policy weaker?
No. An exclusion is specific to the named pursuit: claims arising from that activity are excluded, and every other claim is assessed normally. The rest of the policy prices and pays exactly as it would without the hobby. What matters is reading the exclusion's exact wording in the PDS and policy schedule, because scope is defined there, not by the activity's everyday name.
Can an exclusion or loading be removed later?
Sometimes. If you genuinely stop the activity, or your profile changes (fewer hours, lower level, further qualifications), you can ask the insurer to review the terms. Whether and how a review happens is up to the insurer's underwriting, and a broker can put the request with the evidence that supports it. Nothing changes automatically; the policy keeps its issued terms until the insurer agrees otherwise.
Does income protection treat hobbies the same way as life cover?
The assessment logic is similar but the appetite is often tighter, because Income Protection and TPD respond to injury as well as death and a pursuit injury is a live claim scenario. It is common for the same disclosed pursuit to receive different outcomes across the cover types within one application. The insurer's underwriting decides each cover type on its own terms.
What about one-off activities, like a single skydive on holiday?
Application questions are generally aimed at pursuits you participate in or intend to participate in, rather than a single past experience. Answer the question as asked: if it asks whether you engage in or intend to engage in an activity, a one-off you have no intention of repeating is answered honestly on that basis. If a question's wording leaves you unsure, check before answering rather than guessing either way.
General Advice Only
This is general advice only and does not take into account your individual circumstances.
Please read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) before making a decision.
Consider seeking personal advice from a licensed financial adviser.
Insure Me For Life is Authorised Representative Number 1244847 of Consilium Advice Australia Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services Licence 246623.