As you may already be aware, you the price of your life insurance policy is determined by a number of risk factors, like your age, occupation, weight, family history, and location. However, there are also other, less apparent risk factors being accounted for, too.

In order to fully understand why your life insurance policy costs as much or as little as it does and what you can do about it, you need to be aware of all of your life insurance policy’s risk factors. Here are just a few that you may not have realized are being factored in.

Your Driving Record.

Yes, the cost of your life insurance policy directly correlates with your driving record, because if you’ve been involved with accidents in the past, you’re more likely to be involved with accidents in the future, which obviously means you’re a higher risk. Thankfully, you shouldn’t have to worry if you’ve had less than two moving violations in the past three years.

Your Hobbies.

If you like to go swimming with sharks, climb steep mountains, or jump out of planes, expect to pay more than the average person for a life insurance policy. Thankfully, most insurers also take into account a person’s experience and the frequency at which they participate in the hobby, so an amateur sky diver will have to pay much, much more for a life insurance policy than his or her instructor.

Your Credit Score.

The life insurers who want to check your credit history aren’t using it as an indicator of how healthy you are, but rather to see how likely it is that you’ll pay your premiums on time. You are a financial risk for the company, after all, and they simply want to see if they’ll be able to collect on their investment.

The best life insurance companies take a number of different factors into account besides your age, family history, and medical history. Though many think that insurers do this so that they can increase the price of their life insurance policies, these factors can actually help bring down the cost of life insurance by showing that a consumer is less of a risk than what other factors may suggest.

If you have any questions about your life insurance policy’s risk factors, feel free to ask in the comments. Find out more here.