One in 20 people who commit suicide in Hong Kong do so within two years of taking out life insurance that allows their families to get payouts for their deaths, a report has found.

About one in five people who kill themselves in Hong Kong have life insurance and, of those, about a quarter take their lives within 24 months of taking out the policies, according to the study by the Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention.

Hong Kong has one of the world's highest suicide rates, despite a recent dip, but insurance companies impose only a one-year exclusion period from the time a policy is issued to allowing a claim for suicide -- one year less than the two-year limit in the US and other countries.

Suicide payouts are costing the industry around $160 million a year and are pushing up premiums. The centre's experts have now urged Hong Kong's life insurance industry to impose a longer exclusion period before suicides are eligible for payouts, and in the longer term to stop such payments altogether.

Payments averaged $200,000 per family.

Industry figures show the percentage of insurance payouts for suicide has risen from about 7 per cent of the total value of payouts in 1997 to around 12 per cent in 2003, researchers say. That compares with around 2 per cent of insurance payouts in the US.

Hong Kong Federation of Insurers executive director Peter Tam Chung-ho said the industry would "support any initiative that will help reduce suicide rates".