Life insurance after a stroke

s97Arnie

Hi,

Currently recovering from a stroke 3 months ago, thankfully on the road to recovery now without many serious long-term symptom's.

Prior to the stroke I had a Life insurance policy with critical illness cover which I successfully claimed on. This policy was closed by the insurer after the critical illness claim.

My question is will I be able to get life insurance & critical illness cover now? I'm guessing Stroke will be excluded as a pre-existing illness?

Will this always be the case? Or if I go a few years without any further strokes will eventually insurers cover me for stroke also?

Thanks

Weighty1

You can *potentially* get life insurance, although it's highly unlikely you'd get critical illness cover again, unless there were some very extenuating for the stroke, such as due to a bang on the head. In this instance then strokes would definitely be excluded from the plan.

For life cover you are likely to need to wait for at least 6-months before any company would consider offering cover and many may want to wait 12-months. If they do offer cover then the standard premium is likely to double or more, depending on the provider, but there wouldn't be any form of exclusion if you did die due to another stroke.

s97Arnie

Thanks for that, stroke was due to high blood pressure & stress. Will wait a few months then get some quotes.

ThinkingOutLoud_2

As above - although there are specialist life insurance providers who will consider you before the open market. When depends on your situation.

The stroke and high blood pressure are a common combination as you will know. But these will impact your risk and also the premium and which insurers will cover you.

You could try someone like Pulse Insurance rather than wait out too long without cover. Call them to find out when they will be able to get cover from.

Chris_Pollard

s97Arnie, solid info above - however, double check your original Life/CIC policy that paid out. It is possible that you might be entitled to a reinstatement option. This might only be limited to life cover, or a cut down version of the CI policy you had, but it is worth checking. There may be a restriction, ie, you have to survive for 12 months before you can effect a replacement policy, but it still could be a better option as when you do become insurable, you will be charged a higher premium.

In the meantime, well done on the recovery and hope it works out for you. If the insurer involved was really helpful and the claims process impressed you - please shout about it. If it wasn't, tell them what they could/should have done differently. All too often only bad news reaches people's ear despite 90% of claims being paid. I'm sure it puts people off insuring themselves but I'm glad you weren't one of them.