Cancer insurance after genetic screening.

spannerface · 11 July 2018 at 12:50PM

I'm a man who's been identified as positive for a mutated BRCA gene. This puts me at greater risk of certain cancers than the general population.
There exists a thing called "The concordat and moratorium on genetics and insurance". The ABI website states "This has been in place since 2001 and it specifies that a customer can take out insurance – critical illness, income protection, and life insurance – without disclosing a predictive genetic test result."

Going to Aviva's "Cancer Essentials" quotation site they ask:
"Has a medical professional ever put you on or advised you to join, a supervised health screening programme because you have a higher risk of developing cancer?".

I'm assuming specialist cancer insurance like this isn't considered a type of critical illness insurance, because this is an indirect way of weeding out people who've tested positively for a genetic test. Women found to be carriers of a BRCA mutation will be offered interventions such as more frequent screening. As a man it's been suggested that my PSA levels are monitored frequently. This question will therefore deny cover to anyone who's had a positive genetics result. The funny thing is they don't actually mention genetic testing anywhere in the policy. It's almost as if they don't quite know where they stand themselves so don't want to use that as a direct criteria for refusal.