Working the Rigs With a Mortgage at Home

Working offshore does not automatically make life insurance expensive, and for a great many North Sea workers it changes the premium very little. What an underwriter wants to establish is not simply that you go offshore, but what you actually do once you are there — your role on the installation, the type of platform or rig, the sea area you work in, how you travel out, and the rota you keep. Routine work in a non-diving role on a fixed installation frequently attracts a modest loading or none at all. Commercial diving is a different world, and it is treated as one.

The reason this matters to most people reading is straightforward: the cover is usually there to protect a mortgage and a family at home while you spend weeks at a time on an oil rig a couple of hundred miles out. That is exactly what life insurance for offshore workers is built to do, and a well-structured decreasing term policy can track a repayment mortgage down over the years you are working the rota. The supplementary questionnaire an insurer sends you is there to price the job accurately, not to talk you out of cover.

This article walks through that offshore questionnaire in full — the helicopter transit, the installation type, the region and the rota pattern — so nothing on it takes you by surprise. It also deals with the question that worries people who took a policy out before they ever went offshore: whether a mid-policy change of job is something you have to report. For most standard UK term cover, the answer is reassuring.

The short answer: what you do offshore matters more than that you go

Underwriters do not price "offshore" as a single thing, because the label covers wildly different levels of exposure. A control-room technician on a fixed North Sea gas platform, a deck crew member on a floating production vessel, a wind-farm maintenance worker and a saturation diver are all "offshore workers", and they present very different risks. The questionnaire exists precisely to tell them apart.

For the large majority of offshore roles — the technicians, operators, engineers, catering and support staff who keep an installation running — the extra risk over an equivalent job onshore is real but contained, and the terms reflect that. It is the specific hazardous duties, diving above all, that move the assessment sharply. This is the same logic underwriters apply to any occupation with a physical edge to it: the job is rated on its own axis, the way being a scaffolder can change the premium, and the aim is to match the terms to the actual work rather than to a job title.

So the honest short answer to "does working offshore affect life insurance?" is: sometimes, often modestly, and occasionally a great deal — and which of those applies to you depends almost entirely on the answers you give to the supplementary questionnaire.

The offshore supplementary questionnaire, in full

When you declare offshore work, the insurer will usually send a short supplementary form. It is predictable, and knowing it in advance means you can answer with the detail an underwriter actually needs. Expect questions covering the following:

• Your job title and duties. What you actually do on board, described in real terms rather than a vague label.
• Whether you dive. The single most important question, and the one that most changes the assessment.
• The type of installation. Fixed platform, jack-up, semi-submersible, drillship, floating production and storage vessel, or an offshore wind turbine.
• The sea area or country. The North Sea and UK continental shelf are treated differently from more remote or higher-risk regions overseas.
• The rota you work. The pattern of time on and off, such as two weeks on and two off, or three and three.
• How many days a year you spend offshore. Your genuine offshore exposure across a year.
• How you travel to the installation. Almost always helicopter transit, sometimes by vessel.
• Any additional hazardous duties. Diving, rope access, working at height, handling explosives or anything else beyond the ordinary run of the role.

Answering these accurately is not box-ticking; it is the reasonable-care duty in action, and it protects the future claim as much as it prices the policy. The remedies an insurer has if the answers are wrong are set out in the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, and they are considerably harsher than any loading the questionnaire itself might produce.

Helicopter transit, installation type and region

The helicopter flight out is the part people fix on, and it is understandable — for most offshore workers it is the most obviously unusual thing about the commute. In underwriting terms, though, routine helicopter transit to and from an installation is generally treated as one factor among several rather than the thing that dominates the price. It is noted, it forms part of the overall exposure, and for standard offshore work it does not usually carry the assessment on its own. If your wider working life also involves aviation, the way an insurer approaches flying is set out in more detail for a private pilot holding a PPL, where the activity is priced or excluded according to the specifics rather than waved through.

Installation type feeds into the same overall judgement. A stable fixed platform, a mobile drilling unit and a floating production vessel do not carry identical risk profiles, and drilling operations in particular can attract closer questions than steady production work. Region matters too. Work on the UK continental shelf and in the North Sea sits within a well-understood, closely regulated regime, and insurers are comfortable with it. Work in more remote waters, or in regions with weaker safety oversight or additional security concerns, is looked at more carefully — and if a role takes you outside UK waters for long stretches, the residence and travel questions start to overlap with the issues covered in our guide to life insurance when you spend six months a year abroad.

Diving: the exception that changes everything

If there is one line on the questionnaire that can transform the outcome, it is the diving question. Commercial offshore diving — and saturation diving especially, where divers live under pressure for extended periods — carries a level of occupational risk in an entirely different bracket from surface work on the same installation. Insurers rate it heavily, and some will apply a substantial loading or a specific exclusion, because the exposure is genuinely severe.

This is why the questionnaire separates the diver from everyone else on the platform so early. If you do not dive, saying so plainly and describing your actual duties keeps your application in the ordinary offshore-worker category, where terms are usually manageable. If you do dive, expect detailed follow-up questions about the type of diving, the depths, the frequency and your qualifications, and expect the diving to be the dominant factor in the price. An FCA-authorised broker who knows which insurers have appetite for diving risk is worth seeking out before you apply, because the difference between insurers on this specific risk can be large.

The rota, and the days you actually spend offshore

The rota is not just an administrative detail; it is a genuine measure of exposure. Someone on an equal-time rota, spending roughly half the year offshore, has a different annual exposure profile from someone who does a handful of short trips. Insurers ask about the pattern — two on, two off; three and three; and so on — and about the total number of days a year you are actually offshore, so they can size the risk to your real working year rather than to a worst-case assumption.

Give the honest, typical figure. Overstating your offshore time can push you into terms you did not need, and understating it is a misrepresentation you do not want sitting on the file when a claim is made. If your rota or role changes materially over the years, that is worth remembering for any new application you make later, though — as the next section explains — it does not generally reach back into a policy you already hold.

If you already hold a policy and then take an offshore job

This is the question that causes the most needless worry. You bought life cover years ago, onshore, and now you are heading offshore for the first time. Do you have to tell the insurer, and does the existing policy still protect you?

For most standard UK term policies, the duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation applies when you take out the policy or when you vary it — not as a running obligation to keep the insurer updated about every change in your life afterwards. A change of occupation part-way through the term is therefore generally not reportable, and an existing policy usually continues to cover you, including for death while working offshore, exactly as it did before. This framework is UK-wide, applying on the same basis in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which matters for the many offshore workers who live in and travel from Aberdeen and the wider Scottish coast.

Two caveats are worth the two minutes it takes to check them. First, read your own policy wording: a small number of policies contain continuing conditions or occupation-related terms, and you want to know whether yours does rather than assume. Second, this reassurance is about ordinary personal cover — if your protection runs through your own limited company, the position can differ, because a relevant life plan still underwrites the director and its own terms govern what is covered.

Matching the cover to the mortgage at home

For most offshore workers the whole point of the cover is the home the wages are paying for. If the aim is to clear a repayment mortgage should the worst happen, a decreasing term policy that falls broadly in step with the outstanding balance is usually the efficient structure, and it is what a lot of offshore workers hold. Two things are worth checking while you can still act on them.

First, find out whether your cover is tied to the loan. It is common for a mortgage-linked policy to be assigned to the lender, which changes who controls the payout, and it is better to know that now than for your family to discover it later. Second, make sure the term runs as long as the debt, because a mismatch can leave an uninsured tail at the end. If you are setting cover up from scratch, or checking that what you have still fits, you can get life insurance quotes and ask an FCA-authorised broker to price the offshore questionnaire across more than one insurer rather than taking the first answer. The full set of occupation, activity and health questions insurers use is gathered in the guide to getting cover with a history, a condition or a job.

Frequently asked questions

Does working offshore mean a higher premium?

Often, but not always. Insurers assess the installation type, the region you work in, your actual role on board, how you travel there and the rota you work. Routine North Sea work in a non-diving role frequently attracts a modest extra charge or none at all. Diving is treated far more heavily, because the occupational risk is much greater.

What does the offshore questionnaire ask?

Typically your job title and duties, whether you dive, the type of installation, the sea area or country, the rota you work, how many days a year you spend offshore, how you travel to the installation, and whether you carry out any additional hazardous duties such as diving, rope access or working at height.

I took the policy out before going offshore. Must I tell my insurer?

For most UK term policies the duty is to answer questions accurately when you take out or vary the contract, not to keep the insurer updated afterwards. A change of job during the policy is not usually reportable, and the cover generally continues. Read your own wording to confirm there is no continuing condition that applies.