Transferring health insurance with pre-existing conditions

aroominyork

Up until about three years ago my wife's employment gave her and me private health insurance with Axa. When she left the job we spoke to Axa's dept that switches departing employees onto privately paid insurance. Axa's corporate policy accepted us with pre-existing conditions (of which we have a few, having clocked up 122 years of age between us) and those carried across to our new privately paid policy.

I remember someone sometime telling me that after making such a switch it is worth, after a year or two, shopping around for other companies to offer a lower premium with the same (pre-existing condition) terms. Is that correct - do insurance companies typically take new customers on that basis? If so, is it best to go through a broker or have multiple conversations with other insurers? And finally, to ensure I do not forget to mention any pre-existing conditions, is it possible to get some kind of schedule from Axa - a bit like asking your motor insurance company for a list of claims when seeking lower quotes (except in this case conditions, not necessarily claims)?

Sandtree

aroominyork said:

 Axa's corporate policy accepted us with pre-existing conditions (of which we have a few, having clocked up 122 years of age between us) and those carried across to our new privately paid policy.

First of all you need to be clearer of what you mean by the above... many insurers will accept you with pre-existing conditions but those conditions will be excluded from cover. Getting cover for "pre-existing conditions" can be much harder depending on what they are.

I use quote marks because some insurers will cover a pre-existing condition that you've had no symptoms and no medication for the last two years... if your not at 2 years when you buy the policy some will allow cover to commence once the two years has kicked in.

You also need to consider what cover you need for pre-existing conditions... no UK policy will give long term cover for day to day management of a chronic/long term condition however if you can get cover for long term conditions then they will cover acute episodes.

Finally, as to the ability to switch insurers... my wife and I are in a similar situation where we took over a corporate policy into a personal one (this a 5x increase in premiums unfortunately). Our policy does provide cover for our pre-existing conditions and having attempted to shop around a few times there were options to buy cheaper including covering unsymptamatic/no treatment cases after 2 years but ours are life long conditions so all but a few one off things would be uncovered.