Life Insurance discrimination?

[hyper-Suze]

Hiya,

Hope all are having a lovely afternoon!

I have had a meeting this morning with a mortgage advisor and this is my first time buy!😱

I have asked about if I take out life insurance/critical illness cover, does the premium I pay get affected by long standing illnesses?

She said it could either be accepted, declined, referred(if waiting results & diagnosis), exempt from the condition or have higher premiums.

What are other peoples experiences with getting insurance for owning a house?

Is it absolutely necessary to have insurance alongside the mortage or can I waiver this and not have any?

Cheers all!!!!
Suze

 

[elliebug]

i have just bought a house and have not been able to find critical illness cover anywhere, still deciding if its worth getting life insurance on its own. my partner has been offered both but as my income is what pays the bills and i could afford it (just) without him but not vica versa doesn't seem any point getting it! would be interested if anyone type1 has managed to get critical illness cover. always worth a try i guess!!

 

[hyper-Suze]

i have just bought a house and have not been able to find critical illness cover anywhere, still deciding if its worth getting life insurance on its own. my partner has been offered both but as my income is what pays the bills and i could afford it (just) without him but not vica versa doesn't seem any point getting it! would be interested if anyone type1 has managed to get critical illness cover. always worth a try i guess!!

Thanks Ellie, thats interesting, sounds like we're in similar situation! I am taking on the mortgage on my own too, and also only just affording it. My o/h has bad credit history and not on as much as me but I would really like it for piece of mind, espc as we are starting a family, i'd like to keep them secure if anything did happen or if we fall critically ill with something else🙂mad🙂 then at least if us as the bill payers can't support, we'd be covered!

Do you know if Diabetes UK know of anywhere that would offer it?

 

[Robster65]

I've not had a mortgage for several years, but I always managed to get both endowment policies and basic fixed term life cover without any penalties but the insurance world is probably very different nowadays.

Is the life policy not for the benefit of the mortgage company ?

ie. if you die, the loan is then repaid from the life policy pay out. Or has that changed too ?😱🙂

Rob

 

[elliebug]

i think i tried diabetes uk, but might be worth trying again, companies seem to change all the time!!

 

[hyper-Suze]

I've not had a mortgage for several years, but I always managed to get both endowment policies and basic fixed term life cover without any penalties but the insurance world is probably very different nowadays.

Is the life policy not for the benefit of the mortgage company ?

ie. if you die, the loan is then repaid from the life policy pay out. Or has that changed too ?😱🙂

Rob

Not too sure, all of this has baffled my head, I've been accepted for mortgage but not proceeded with it yet, I want to visit a few more lenders yet! Maybe I should ask them to explain it to me as if I were a 2 year old!!!

I think the lady said the minimum they need is the buildings cover! Or maybe I wasn't listening properly...more than likely with me!

 

[elliebug]

i think house insurance is needed for a mortguage -buildings cover, but life/illness insurance is optional, cos if you get ill and can't pay they'll just take your house and get their money that way! we found getting the mortguage was the easy bit!

 

[margie]

You need to look at the small print in these things. My brother discovered that the critical insurance cover he was offered (in another EU country) was worthless, it ruled out almost anything you would want to claim.

Do you know anyone who works for an insurance company who could look into what the best policy is. The biggest difficulty is that the insurance rules out anything related to pre-existing medical conditions which can be a bit of a nightmare to wade through.

 

[Ellie Jones]

If I remember right if you have a baisc repayment mortage you will have to separate life insurance policy..

If you have an endowment mortage the life insurance is part of the endowment..

In both cases either for life insurance policy or endowment diabetes will bump up the cost and you will be asked to take a medical! This they use to determine an age for your insurance hence why your preiume goes up..

If you are a T1 or using insulin it is very unlikely that you will get critical/illness if you are T2 diet/medication you may get cover but it's pretty doubtfull that it's going to be worth the paper it's written on! But that could be said for most non-diabetics though!

I used to work with my OH (for around 15 years) and the company that we worked for pulled their sick scheme... Instead they arranged with an insurance company a critical illness/accident cover discount but we had to pay for it ourselves!

We both applied for cover, we both turned down because we were insulin dependant diabetics, but we could reappy if we reduced our dependancy on insulin😱 Gald they did, as the cover wasn't particularlly cheap if you want proper level of cover, and those non-diabetics who took out the cover found that when it came to a claim they couldn't!

One found that when she was involved in a car accident suffering whip lash injuries which ended her being off work for 6 months, couldn't claim a penny because the hospital had discharged her too soon, you had to have spent 24 hours in hospital, she spent 23 hours and 56 minutes! claim void!

 

[Northerner]

I wonder how they would quantify a reduced dependence on insulin? 🙄 The thing these companies are missing is that a well-controlled diabetic is probably much healthier than a non-diabetic who may be eating a terrible diet, never getting any health checks and drinking like a fish.

 

[Ellie Jones]

We did ponder that one as well northerner...

 

[Robster65]

If I remember right if you have a baisc repayment mortage you will have to separate life insurance policy..

If you have an endowment mortage the life insurance is part of the endowment..

That's how I understood it. Or at least how it used to be when I was last in the market.

I wonder how they would quantify a reduced dependence on insulin? 🙄 The thing these companies are missing is that a well-controlled diabetic is probably much healthier than a non-diabetic who may be eating a terrible diet, never getting any health checks and drinking like a fish.

I would imagine they see it the same nowadays with much better statistics on life expectancy. There must be many categories that would add to premiums or add exclusions. Diabetes on its, unless newly diagnosed with other health concerns shouldn't be an automatic bump-up.

Rob

 

[Ellie Jones]

I know at one time, diabetics used to get very good deals on pensions!

 

[Northerner]

I know at one time, diabetics used to get very good deals on pensions!

Same as smokers, you get a better deal because they think they won't have to pay out for as long! 😱

 

[hotchop]

The only insurance a lender will insist on you having is buildings and contents insurance.

When my mum died, she had a 50k mortgage outstanding, with no cover whatsoever and my brother and I had to either take on the debt or sell the house within 6 weeks of her death.

Shabby National were blooming awful 2 weeks after she died, they sent her a letter saying.... Dear Mrs.... Sorry that you have decided to die, please pay outstanding mortgage by....... or we will commence an agency to collect on our behalf GRRRRRRR

It was a pretty horrific time for us. My husband and I took the house and a new mortgage to cover the debt and buy my brother out of his half of the total value, at that time.

It taught us that we will never put our children in that situation and now we have a huuuge amount of insurances to cover all eventualities.

We now have the following:

Life insurance x 2 - pays out if one or both of us dies

critical illness x 2 - Pays out if one, or both of us gets a terminal or longstanding illness such as cancer - There are statistics that show that 1 in 4 people will have some sort of cancer, at some stage.. cant link im afraid.. I think it was on a cancer adverts on telly

Income protection x 2 - pays out current income if one of us, or both, is made redundant or is on long term illness absence

Building and contents - Standard

Familiy Protection - This pays out ?800 a month for the children if one of us dies

The above insurances cost us nearly ?200 per month but to be fair, if we didnt have them, that is less than 1 weeks benefit of any of them so its a bit like can we afford not to have them??

ETA: what i mean is that my income and part of the mortgage is more than ?200 a week combined... does that make sense??

I have claimed once for income protection for 6 weeks when I had a hysterectomy, 4 years ago and it was a god send.. It paid the whole of the mortgage( not just my half) and gave my my salary even though I had full sick pay from work 🙂
ETA: they paid out over 3K which was about 2 years of total contributions

I have a friend who has just been quoted ?150 a month for Income protection but she cannot understand the logic that if she is made redundant, they will pay out her ?700 a month mortgage and without it, she doesnt have enough savings to last 3 months mortgage nevermind other expenses.

another ETA: Every now and again we look at ways to reduce our outgoings and always, we discuss cancelling some of the insurances... I just know that if we did, something would happen and we would be in financial ruin for the sake of a few quid

My advice would be to always take insurance.

 

[Jennywren]

I was talking to my DSN about assurances and insurances the other day , and she was explaining in years to come , we wont be paying a lot more than everybody else because of the good care and changes in treatment diabetics life expectancy will be that of someone without diabetes , so they wont be able to charge extra premiums 🙂

 

[hyper-Suze]

We now have the following:

Life insurance x 2 - pays out if one or both of us dies

critical illness x 2 - Pays out if one, or both of us gets a terminal or longstanding illness such as cancer - There are statistics that show that 1 in 4 people will have some sort of cancer, at some stage.. cant link im afraid.. I think it was on a cancer adverts on telly

Income protection x 2 - pays out current income if one of us, or both, is made redundant or is on long term illness absence

Building and contents - Standard

Familiy Protection - This pays out ?800 a month for the children if one of us dies

The above insurances cost us nearly ?200 per month but to be fair, if we didnt have them, that is less than 1 weeks benefit of any of them so its a bit like can we afford not to have them??

Thanks 'Hot Chop'

There is a bucket load of information there, very valuable and also worth noting from your experiences how rude and insensitive corporations can be in griefing times.

My question was, have you found that you were asked to pay extra premium or excluded from your diabetes when taking out the insurances? I wouldn't expect you to give figures of course but an indication of yey or neh if this was experienced with any insurers?

Cheers, Suze

 

[hotchop]

yes my premiums went up....... small price to pay for security imo

The key to my post was that I was left in ?50 k of debt because someone didnt have any cover not the service I received from shabby national. I mentioned that because of the 6 weeks they gave us to repay the outstanding mortgage in full before repossesion proceedings began.

The reason I went into detail was to highlight the fact that without any of this cover or similar, the majority of people would probably be on the homeless register if they were off ill or made redundant for a significant amount of time.

When i worked in banking, during the height of the financial meltdown in 2007-08, I would see maybe 20-30 customers a week who had refused/declined additional cover only to lose their jobs weeks/months after taking out a new mortgage and having to declare bankruptcy... very sad times.

 

[hyper-Suze]

yes my premiums went up....... small price to pay for security imo

The key to my post was that I was left in ?50 k of debt because someone didnt have any cover not the service I received from shabby national. I mentioned that because of the 6 weeks they gave us to repay the outstanding mortgage in full before repossesion proceedings began.

The reason I went into detail was to highlight the fact that without any of this cover or similar, the majority of people would probably be on the homeless register if they were off ill or made redundant for a significant amount of time.

When i worked in banking, during the height of the financial meltdown in 2007-08, I would see maybe 20-30 customers a week who had refused/declined additional cover only to lose their jobs weeks/months after taking out a new mortgage and having to declare bankruptcy... very sad times.

Thanks Hotchop for your promptness! Yes, I too really see the benefit and reasoning behind the cover. I do want to take this on, but I am not quite at that point yet and I wanted to know so I can account for the hike in the insurers costs.

As I am the one half out of my relationship to be earning the main wage, of course I would want this protected and stay safe, I'd hate to be one of those people to have been visiting the bank to declare bankrupcy!

Many thanks again and your your very useful insight!!!!
Lets just hope I get decent cover when I am ready to take on this committment!!!!!

 

[hotchop]

There are some decent cashback sites also.... Topcashback and Quidco to name a couple.

I think I earnt nearly ?80 per person per policy with them so it was quite a saving.

Good luck!!