What '+100%' Means on a UK Life Insurance Offer

You applied for cover, the underwriting finished, and the offer that came back is higher than the quote you started with. Somewhere on the paperwork is a phrase like a rating, a loading, a figure such as +100%, or a charge described as per mille. It looks like a penalty, and it can feel like one. On a UK life insurance offer it is not a rejection, and it has a precise, unexciting meaning: the insurer has judged your mortality risk to be above the standard level for your age, and it has put a number on how far above.

A rating is the mechanism that lets an insurer say yes to a risk it would otherwise have to turn down. Rather than refuse you because a health or lifestyle factor pushes you above its standard pool, it keeps you in the pool and charges for the extra risk. The two ways it does that on a British offer are a percentage loading of the standard rate — which is what +50%, +100% or +150% means — and a per mille charge, a fixed amount added for every £1,000 of cover. This page explains what each does in real terms, why a loading does not always change your premium by the same percentage, and why the American table ratings lettered A to J that fill search results never appear on a UK policy.

A rating is also not the same thing as an exclusion or a decline. An exclusion removes a named cause of death from the cover; a decline is a no. A loading is a yes with a higher price. Knowing which one you are actually holding is the first step to doing something useful with it.

What a rating means, in one line

Every insurer has a standard rate for a healthy applicant of a given age and sex. That standard rate is the baseline the whole premium is built on. When the underwriter finds something that raises the risk — a medical condition, a family history, a weight, a lifestyle factor, an occupation or a pursuit — it does not usually tear up the offer. It adjusts the risk element of the price so that the higher-risk life is paying its way in the pool.

That adjustment is the rating. It is expressed in one of two currencies. Either the standard risk rate is multiplied up by a percentage, or a flat charge is bolted on for every £1,000 of cover you hold. Both raise the premium; they raise it in different shapes, and the shape matters when you are trying to work out whether the offer in front of you is a fair one.

A percentage loading, and what "+100%" really says

A percentage loading is a multiplier applied to the standard risk rate. The convention is to state the extra, not the total. So "+50%" means the risk rate is one and a half times standard. "+100%" means it is doubled. "+150%" means two and a half times. Underwriters sometimes call this "150%" or "200%" of standard instead, describing the total rather than the addition, which is a common source of confusion — always check whether a figure is the extra or the whole.

The important word in "+100% means roughly double" is roughly. The percentage bites on the mortality risk the insurer is pricing, and mortality is only one part of what you pay. It is the honest way to read the number: the insurer is saying it expects a claim from a life like yours to be about twice as likely, over the term, as from a standard life of the same age. It is a statement about a pool of similar risks, not a prediction about you personally.

Percentage loadings are the usual currency for a risk that scales with the size of the cover and runs for the life of the policy — most health-related ratings work this way. Where a condition sits right at a threshold, small differences in the evidence can move you between bands, which is why two people with what sounds like the same diagnosis can be quoted very differently. We have set out one clear example of that in how a stage 0 melanoma is treated at the underwriting cliff, and another where the evidence is still forming in applying for cover with long Covid and no formal diagnosis.

A per mille charge, and why it is often temporary

A per mille charge works differently. Instead of scaling the underlying rate, it adds a fixed sum to the annual premium for every £1,000 of cover. "Per mille" simply means "per thousand." The charge is a flat monetary loading that does not care what the base rate is; it cares only about how much cover you have bought.

Insurers reach for a per mille charge when the extra risk is better described as a roughly constant addition than as a percentage of an ever-changing base — an occupational hazard, a pursuit, or a temporary extra risk that is expected to fall away. That last case is the one worth understanding. A per mille loading is frequently applied for a defined number of years rather than the whole term: a recent event, a period of treatment, or a settling-down interval after which the insurer expects the risk to return towards standard. When that window closes, the extra charge can drop off, and the premium steps down to what a standard life would have paid. If your offer carries a per mille figure, ask whether it runs for the full term or only for a stated number of years, and what happens at the end of that period.

Why a loading does not always change your premium by the same amount

This is the part that catches people out. A premium is not pure mortality risk. It also carries the insurer's expenses, its policy administration charges, and a margin. Those parts are not always scaled by the loading. So a "+100%" rating applied to the risk element does not mechanically double the figure you see at the bottom of the offer, and a smaller loading can move the total by a surprisingly small amount.

Two practical consequences follow. First, do not read the percentage as a direct multiplier on your quote — a +50% rating is not "half as much again on the price," and treating it that way will mislead you. Second, because the fixed parts of a premium weigh more heavily on small policies, the same loading can feel proportionately harsher on a modest sum assured than on a large one. The only reliable way to know what a rating does to your actual figure is to see the rated premium itself, next to the standard one, for the exact cover you want.

The table ratings A to J that never appear on a UK offer

If you have searched this topic you will have met "table ratings" — a system of letters, A through J, or numbers, Table 1 to Table 16, each said to add a further slice of extra mortality. Almost all of that material is American. US insurers grade substandard risks in lettered or numbered tables, each step representing another increment above standard. It is a real system. It is simply not the one your UK insurer uses.

British insurers express extra risk as a percentage loading of the standard rate, a per mille charge, an exclusion of a named cause, a postponement to a later date, or an outright decline. There is no table letter on a UK offer, and there is no hidden conversion you are meant to apply. If a broker or a forum answer starts translating your rating into "about a Table D," treat it as background colour from another market, not as anything on your policy. What governs your premium is the percentage or per mille figure the insurer has actually written down.

What the number is measured against: base mortality

Underwriters do not invent the standard rate. They anchor it to population mortality — broadly, the chance that a person of your exact age and sex dies within a given year — and then layer their own claims experience and medical evidence on top. The public reference point for that base mortality across the United Kingdom is the set of national life tables the Office for National Statistics publishes. A loading is applied on top of that base, which is why the same +100% attached at 35 and at 60 represents very different underlying probabilities: the base it doubles is far higher at the older age.

Source: Office for National Statistics, National life tables, UK: 2022 to 2024, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

That is also why a rating is worth reading as information rather than judgement. It tells you where, in mortality terms, the insurer has placed you relative to a standard life your age — nothing more. It does not say you will die sooner, and it does not decide the claim. A rated policy that is kept in force and disclosed honestly pays a claim in exactly the same way a standard one does.

What you can do about a rated offer

A rating is a starting position, not a verdict, and you have more room than the letter suggests. The single most useful fact is that underwriters differ. The condition, weight, history or pursuit that earns a loading at one insurer may sit inside another's standard terms, or attract a smaller one, because appetites and evidence thresholds vary across the market. A rated offer from one insurer is not the market's answer.

A few concrete steps are worth taking before you accept or walk away. Ask the insurer, in writing, exactly what the rating is based on and whether any of the underlying facts are wrong; a corrected weight, date or test result can change a band. Ask whether the loading is permanent or reviewable, and whether a per mille charge runs for the whole term or a fixed period. If the reason behind the number is a disability, it is worth knowing whether a decline or a rating based on a disability is lawful and how to ask which source the insurer relied on. And keep the rating separate in your mind from the quite different question of whether an insurer can treat a policy as void for non-disclosure — a rating is a price on a live policy, not a threat to a future claim.

Because the spread between insurers is where the value is, this is a case for an FCA-authorised broker who can present the same medical evidence to several underwriters rather than accepting the first number. If you want to test what the market makes of your circumstances, you can get life insurance quotes and have a broker take the case to underwriters who are known to look more kindly on your particular history. For the wider picture on applying with a condition, a record or a job behind you, our guide to getting cover with a history, a condition or a job sets out how the whole process fits together, and what a life insurer can and cannot see about a criminal record covers one factor people wrongly assume drives a loading.

One last point on jurisdiction: the way loadings are expressed is a market convention that is the same across the United Kingdom, and the consumer protections that sit behind an application — the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 and access to the Financial Ombudsman Service — apply in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland alike. A rating is not a regional matter; where the law does differ between the nations is in the machinery around death and estates, not in how an underwriter prices a risk.

Frequently asked questions

What does a plus 100 per cent rating mean?

It means the insurer has assessed your mortality risk as roughly double the standard rate for someone of your age, and has adjusted the risk element of the premium accordingly. It does not always double what you pay, because the expenses and administration built into a premium are not always scaled in the same way as the risk rate.

What is a per mille loading?

A per mille charge adds a fixed amount for every £1,000 of cover, rather than scaling the underlying risk rate by a percentage. It is often used for a temporary or event-based extra risk, and insurers sometimes apply it for a set number of years rather than the whole term, after which the extra charge can fall away.

Do UK insurers use table ratings A to J?

No. Table ratings lettered A to J are an American convention that appears constantly in search results but never on a UK offer. British insurers express extra risk as a percentage loading of the standard rate, a per mille charge, an exclusion, a postponement, or a decline. There is no table letter to convert your rating into.