CuraVision - The ABCs - Cancer

CuraVision ABCs Cancer – Video Transcript

Hi. So today, I’m going to carry on the CuraVision ABC series, and I will be speaking to you today about our client Miss C., who I will refer to as Cynthia. She came to us having had a history of cancer, and wanting life insurance. Cynthia came to us, she was non-smoker, normal range BMI, and she had a history of cancer.

At the age of six, she had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. She had bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy to treat the condition. Everything had finished by the age of nine. She’s now 22 years old, and she had been clear of follow up and discharged for follow up, for seven years.

When we spoke to Cynthia, what she wanted to do was cover her mortgage for her partner. She had a capital and repayment mortgage of £123,000 over 39 years, and she just wanted to make sure that if something happened to her, that there would be funds provided to her partner to pay off that mortgage.

She had been looking by herself and had come across a couple of declines in regards to getting life insurance, and had approached us to help her. We started looking on the market for her, and very similarly, there was quite a few companies that were coming back saying to us that it was a decline, that we’re not going to offer the life insurance, or they were going to offer life insurance, but increase the premium because of the perceived risk of there being a claim on the policy, and because of her having had the cancer. The premiums were getting increased ridiculously so, and it was just not feasible. It wouldn’t be feasible in the sense of advice to pay that kind of money per month, in regards to having life insurance in place.

We did find one insurance company though, who were prepared to look at the life insurance, after having had the leukaemia, at roughly double the basic premium that somebody would pay who hasn’t had the cancer. That may not sound ideal, but in regards to insurance and cancer, that’s actually not really that bad of an offering. We put that through, the application, and we spoke to the GP. Well, we didn’t speak to the GP, but the insurance spoke to the GPs, established Cynthia’s health then and now, and we were very pleased to see that the insurer decided that they would offer Cynthia the life insurance at standard rates, so that means the basic premium that anybody would pay for the life insurance.

We gave Cynthia the option of just covering her mortgage, but she also, and we felt it was probably quite useful, if she has some additional funds to have into the household if she were to die, to replace her income for a couple of years for her partner. As well as covering the mortgage, we put in a couple of years with her income into the value of the life insurance policy.

So that became a level life insurance policy, which means that it remains the same level throughout, rather than decreasing like the mortgage. So she knew, and her partner knew, that for the next 39 years, we kept it at the same length of time as the mortgage when that main liability was there, they would have £200,000 of life insurance for 39 years for a monthly premium of approximately £12 per month, which we fell is a very, very good and reasonable offer from the insurance company for somebody who has already had leukaemia.