How Many Units Do You Put on the Form?

When a life insurance application asks how much you drink, it wants your genuine, typical weekly number in units — not your best week, not the figure you would give a doctor you are trying to impress. The single most useful thing to know about how many units you declare on life insurance is this: a truthful high number is usually something an underwriter can work with, and an understated low one is the classic lifestyle misrepresentation, the one most likely to unravel a claim years later.

It unravels because your drinking is not a private matter between you and the form. If you have ever had blood tests, your liver function results already sit on your GP record, and an insurer can ask to see them with your consent. Does drinking affect life insurance in the UK? Often less than people fear at the honest end, and far more than they hope at the dishonest end — because the honest number is assessed, while a low number that the record contradicts is the thing that turns a payout into a dispute.

The short answer: give your genuine weekly figure

The question is not a moral test and it is not looking for zero. Insurers know that most adults drink, and a large part of the market is priced for people who drink moderately. What the underwriter needs is an accurate figure so the terms match the risk. Give them your honest typical week, and in the great majority of cases that is the end of it.

The instinct to round down is understandable and it is the wrong instinct. The premium saved by shaving a few units off is small, and the thing you put at risk by doing it is the entire point of the policy — a payout to your family at the moment they most need it. A level term policy taken to protect a mortgage or an income only does its job if it pays, and an inaccurate lifestyle answer is one of the surest ways to give an insurer a reason not to.

So the short answer is the boring one: work out what you actually drink in a normal week, and write that down. The rest of this page explains what that number does, why a low one is so easily caught, and what a genuinely high one really costs — which is usually less than the fear attached to it.

What the units question is actually asking

A unit in the UK is defined as 10ml, or 8g, of pure alcohol. Because it is a measure of the alcohol itself rather than the size of the glass, the count depends on both volume and strength, and it is easy to under-count without meaning to. A large 250ml glass of average-strength wine is around three units, not one. A pint of strong lager or cider can be around three units where a pint of ordinary-strength beer is closer to two. Four large glasses of wine across a week is already a dozen units before you have counted a single beer.

Source: NHS, Alcohol units guidance (nhs.uk), which sets out the UK unit definition and typical unit values for common drinks.

The question is also asking about your habit, not your best fortnight. Underwriters are experienced at reading a number that has been quietly optimised. What they want is the typical week — the ordinary one, including the Friday and the Sunday lunch — because that is the figure that reflects the risk they are pricing. If your drinking varies a lot, an honest average with a note that it varies is far better than a tidy low number that your medical record does not support.

Why understating is the classic lifestyle misrepresentation

Alcohol is the textbook example of a lifestyle answer that gets caught, and the reason is a set of blood tests you may not even remember having. Routine liver function tests, and in particular a raised gamma-GT, can point to heavier drinking, and those results sit on your GP record for years. When an insurer asks — with your written consent — for a targeted GP report, an understated units figure and a raised liver result in the same file are a direct contradiction.

This is where the honesty rules bite. Under the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, you must take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation. If you later make a claim and the insurer can show your drinking answer was wrong, what happens next depends on how it was wrong. A careless answer is dealt with proportionately — the insurer does what it would have done with the true figure, which can mean a reduced payout. A deliberate or reckless one — writing down a number you knew was well below the truth — can mean the claim is refused and the premiums kept.

An insurer reads a blood result the way it reads any medical fact: on its specifics, not on a label. That is the same discipline that makes a word like "remission" almost meaningless on its own, which is why an underwriter looking at a cancer history asks four specific questions rather than accepting the word. Applied to drinking, the specifics are your units, your liver results and your alcohol-related history — and the units you write down need to survive contact with the other two.

What an honest high number actually costs

Here is the part that people who drink more than the guidelines rarely believe until they see it: a high figure, declared honestly, is usually assessed rather than refused. An underwriter faced with a stable intake, normal liver results and no history of alcohol-related medical problems has a picture of someone who drinks a fair amount and is, on the evidence, physically unharmed by it. That is a risk most insurers will price.

What a high number does trigger is questions, and sometimes a test. Expect to be asked how long you have drunk at that level, whether it is steady or rising, whether you have ever been advised to cut down, and whether there is any alcohol-related medical history. The insurer may ask for a blood test or a GP report to confirm the picture. None of that is a refusal — it is the underwriter gathering the specifics so the terms can be set on evidence rather than on the number in isolation.

The outcome, where terms do change, is more often a loading than a decline, and it is not the last word. Insurers set their own thresholds and read them differently, so a rating from one is not the market's verdict. When you want to see the real position rather than the worst one in your head, you can get life insurance quotes and let an FCA-authorised broker place an honest set of answers with the insurers most comfortable with them.

Consumption versus dependency: where the line sits

The distinction underwriters care about most is not high versus low. It is stable consumption versus dependency and harm. The UK Chief Medical Officers advise keeping to no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days, to keep health risks low. Drinking above that does not trigger an automatic refusal — plenty of applications well above 14 units are assessed and accepted — but it is the point beyond which an underwriter starts to look for what else is going on.

Source: UK Chief Medical Officers' Low Risk Drinking Guidelines, published by the Department of Health and Social Care under the Open Government Licence.

What genuinely worries an underwriter is the pattern that suggests harm: abnormal liver results, a history of alcohol-related hospital admissions, treatment for dependency, or drinking bound up with other conditions. Alcohol-specific deaths are recorded every year in the Office for National Statistics' death registrations, and they are not a rare event — which is precisely why the question exists and why the signals of dependency are read closely.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR), 2024, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Drinking also rarely sits alone on a form. Heavy, sustained intake is a recognised trigger for the heart rhythm condition covered in our page on life insurance with atrial fibrillation, so an alcohol answer and an AF diagnosis can be read together. It is also frequently assessed alongside mental health, which is why the units question and a history such as the one in our guide to life insurance with bipolar disorder can end up weighed as parts of the same picture rather than as separate boxes.

If you have already put down a number that is too low

If you are reading this having already submitted a figure you know was optimistic, the useful news is that this is fixable, and fixing it is strongly in your interest. Contact the insurer or your broker and correct the record. Doing so before any claim converts a potential dispute into a routine re-rating — the insurer reassesses on the true figure, which may mean an adjusted premium and nothing worse.

The alternative is to leave an answer in place that your own GP record may contradict, and to hope it is never checked. That is not a plan; it is a bet placed on your family's behalf that they will lose at the worst possible moment. The 2012 Act is designed to treat honest corrections far more kindly than discovered misrepresentations, and an underwriter would much rather have the right number now than argue about the wrong one after a death.

One reassurance worth holding on to: correcting a lifestyle answer is ordinary and unremarkable to an insurer. It is not a confession that blows up the application. It is the difference between a policy that pays and one that might not, and it is entirely within your power to secure the first.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The underwriting logic here is UK-wide. Units are counted the same way, the CMO guidance applies across the UK, and the 2012 Act governs disclosure throughout. What differs, as with any medical evidence, is the statute controlling your access to the reports an insurer requests.

In England, Wales and Scotland, the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 gives you the right to see a report your own doctor has written for an insurer before it is sent, and to ask for factual errors — including anything recorded inaccurately about your drinking — to be corrected. In Northern Ireland the equivalent is the Access to Personal Files and Medical Reports (Northern Ireland) Order 1991, which provides broadly similar rights under its own framework. Wherever you live, if an insurer is asking to see liver results or a GP report, use that right: check what is being sent, and make sure it is accurate.

For how drinking sits among the other questions a life insurer asks — conditions, medication, occupation and history — our guide to getting cover with a history, a condition or a job puts the pieces together.

Frequently asked questions

How many units count as heavy drinking to an insurer?

Insurers set their own thresholds and they vary. The UK Chief Medical Officers advise drinking no more than 14 units a week, spread over three days or more, to keep health risks low. Answers well above that usually prompt further questions, and sometimes a blood test, rather than an automatic refusal. What concerns an underwriter is the pattern around the number, not the number on its own.

What happens if I put a lower number than the truth?

If a claim is later made and the insurer can show you misrepresented your drinking, it can reduce or refuse the payout depending on whether the answer was careless, or deliberate or reckless, under the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012. Liver function results already on your medical record are a common way an understated figure comes to light.

Will an honest high figure get me refused?

Not necessarily. A high but stable intake, with normal liver results and no alcohol-related medical history, is usually assessed rather than refused. Underwriters are far more concerned by signs of dependency, abnormal blood results, or a history of alcohol-related admissions than by the number alone. Where terms do change it is more often a loading than a decline, and one insurer's view is not the whole market.