Life / Critical Illness Insurance for Existing Conditions?

nuttycam

I have been trying for the past year to get critical illness and life cover with no luck. I have Trigeminal Neuralgia and had to get a MRI last year and because of this i cant seem to get cover now.

Does anyone know of any companys that are good for coverage?

Any help would be great!

susieb

Are they refusing you because of the MRI scan? I dont understand TN very well, but its not life treatening is it, and surely the MRI scan came back as free from tumours etc.
I only ask as I had an MRI, following a bad ear infection that made me very dizzy, it was all clear and I am now applying for life insurance and am waiting as they have referred it to GP, are they going to exclude me just because I had an MRI even though it was clear?

attmos

Have you tried https://www.riskplacement.com which specialises in getting life cover for people with previous medical conditions or have what is considered a risky occupation or past time? I work for the company doing their IT (not marketing) so i have an interest in promoting this company as far as they pay part of my salary but I don’t get commission or referral income by promoting the company.

Riskplacement are the only independant company in the UK (and I think the world) to specialise in this area of the market. We have found that most of the leading Insurers of life cover are focusing on the standard ‘normal risk’ business as it's quicker to write and a lot cheaper than ‘non standard’ risk. This is mainly because ‘normal risk’ cases are processed electronically and cost very little to process. ‘Non-standard’ cases on the other hand need to be reviewed by a trained Underwriter who looks at all the medical evidence and makes a judgement about what the additional increase in risk is of insuring the life. This process takes a lot longer and costs the Insurance Company a lot more. As a consequence many of the leading names don’t insure these non-standard risks causing a mounting issue for the insurance industry as a whole that they need to address.

Also, as insurance companies tend to be risk averse rather than risk managers (which are what they should be – in my view) they tend to have a ‘if in doubt, decline’ approach to unusual combinations of conditions and therefore leaving many people without protection for their families.

Research done by the insurance companies themselves show that about 1 in 5 of all life insurance applications in the UK fall into this 'non-standard' risk category so it’s not a small problem.

Most people will do what Martin advises which is to go to one of the quote engines and get the most competative quote. These quotes are based on the minimal information that the insurance companies need to do a quote so that the forms are kept short so as not to put off the customer. However, this means that the quotes are all based on the assumption that you have excellent health and don’t have a higher risk occupation, past time or spend extended periods overseas. Once you’ve chosen your insurance company you then complete the full form and send it off. If your one of the 20% you get to fill in more forms and probably go for a medical. You wait for the results and then a few weeks later you get a quote which is going to be higher than the one you got from the quote engine.

The key thing to note here is that you’ve chosen the insurance company based on a comparison of quotes based on a perfectly healthy, ‘normal risk’ basis and assumed that they will also be the most competative for a non-standard risk basis this is WRONG!! It’s almost like being led into a trap.

OK, so the sensible thing to do is complete a form for say 4 of the top insurers and see what the final quote is. But you’ll end up going to 4 medicals as the insurance companies don’t share one medical report – Joy!

This is why Risk Placement Services was created. Our simplified process is as follows:

1. You complete one form online at https://www.riskplacement.com
2. Our underwriters review your application and arrange a medical if needed.
3. We then send your application and medical report as a complete pack to the insurers we know will be most likely able to quote based on your application and medical report.
4. The insurance companies get all the information they need to do their underwriting
5. The quotes are collated by Risk Placement Services and available online for you to review and choose

Our USPs are:

• Only complete one form
• Only attend one medical
• Get many quotes
• We work closely with the insurers and their underwriters to understand their appitite for certain types of risk profile
• You are more likely to get insurance through Risk Placement Service than any other method and at a cheaper price than any other method

Our experience shows that the range of quotes that come back can be as extreme as on insurance company quoting the same premium as for a ‘standard risk’ case, another quoting 2 times as much and another insurance company declining the case completely (remember, this is based on exactly the same application form and medical evidence)

Apart from the human judgement element of the Underwriter that will give a range of assesments of risk there are other factors that lead to such a wide range of quotes. You can think of insurance companies being a bit like bookies in that they have to manage the amount and type of risk they take on and one way of doing this is by pricing themselves out of the market for certain types or risk for a period until their books balance or flatly refusing to take the risk – just the way a bookie works. So if you are unlucky to have a profile that isn’t wanted by the insurer then you get an inflated quote or worse no cover at all.

Most people don’t have this insight into how insurance companies operate and so treat their life insurance as they treat car or house insurance.

I hope that’s made some sense and not been too long winded. As I say I work on the IT for this company but have picked up a good understanding of their marketplace in the last 3 years. One last thing to note is that Risk Placement Services has been working almost exclusively with Financial Advisors (over 4000 Advisors use the site regularly.) which is why the name of the company isn’t that well known yet but they are starting to go to the direct market.

dunstonh

Any IFA or independent protection adviser should be able to help. They have access to the underwriters of the various insurance companies and can take your details down and then spend some time contacting the various companies to see how they would treat your application.

The good thing about doing it that way is if an insurance company turns you down, it doesnt get declared as a declined application.