Tell The Insurers Everything When You Apply For Life And Critical Illness Insurance.
The failure to disclose information, especially medical information, is the most common reason why an insurer will reject a claim on a life or critical illness policy. To help underline some issues, we want to tell you a true story – but we’ve concealed the policyholders’ name and a few other aspects to preserve anonymity.
Mrs A was fighting a secondary infection following surgery to remove cancerous lymph nodes in her groin when she received further bad news. Her critical illness insurer was refusing to pay out the 200,000 she was expecting. To understand why and the issues involved it’s useful to understand how the events unfolded.
In June 2001, Mrs A visited her GP after discovering a patch of flaky skin on her back. Mrs A thought it was eczema. During a brief consultation, her GP thought that it should be looked and recommended a referral to a dermatologist. But soon afterwards the flaky skin healed and Mrs A cancelled the appointment with the dermatologist. Apparently her GP did not express any major concern and some years later admitted that...