Can I get Life Insurance with Atrial Fibrillation 2023

There are often quite a lot of options for people to get life insurance when they have atrial fibrillation. It’s impossible to say that you absolutely will be able to get life insurance, or that this insurer is the best one for you, or that you will be looking at £30 per month for the cover, without knowing more about you.

Life insurance is assessed on a number of different things including your age, if you’re a smoker, your BMI, your medical history and family medical history, your work, travel and hobbies. All of these things influence the right insurer and the best life insurance to meet your needs.

Here’s some pointers on what you need to know about applying for life insurance when you have atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation is asked about in most life insurance applications under the question ‘Have you ever had a heart condition?’

The insurer is going to want to know

• When were you diagnosed
• What medications do you take if any
• How often do you experience symptoms
• Have you needed any surgery

There can be more things that they ask about, but these are some of the more common questions. It can be helpful to know what happened that led to your diagnosis. Sometimes atrial fibrillation is diagnosed at a routine medical and the person has had no symptoms and no idea that they have it. For other people it could be that they’ve had some symptoms that have led to the diagnosis.

There can be times where the insurers say that you need to wait to get life insurance. If it’s a case of you’ve had some symptoms and your GP thinks it’s atrial fibrillation but you are not having any tests, or your tests are in 3 months time, the insurer could say that you need to wait. You might hear the words ‘postpone your application’. It is quite common for insurers to do this if there are any outstanding medical tests, as they want to have a clear picture of your health before offering cover.

Not all insurers will postpone your life insurance application, but it does happen in many situations.

It can be really helpful to know if your diagnosis or any treatments that you have had have been through the NHS or private healthcare. This is because sometimes the treatments that you get through private healthcare happen much more quickly than you would get them on the NHS. 

As an example you might have a pacemaker fitted through private healthcare as a preventative treatment, where it’s done before the atrial fibrillation has developed to a strong level. If you were being treated on the NHS it’s more likely that the pacemaker would be fit as a reactive situation where the atrial fibrillation has already become quite strong.

Insurers will usually assume that your treatment has been done on the NHS and then also assume that use of a pacemaker or having a catheter ablation is a sign that your atrial fibrillation was stronger than it actually was.

It’s quite likely that the insurer will ask your permission to speak with your GP to confirm your diagnosis and the treatments that you have had. They will only do this with your expressed permission and your GP should not release your medical history without sight of this approval from you. We like to suggest that you ask to see a copy of this report before your GP sends it to the insurer, just so that you can check that everything written in it matches what you have been told about your health. 

Sometimes insurers can accept medical letters from your GP or cardiologist to assess your life insurance application, without having to go out for a full report. If you have any medical letters to hand that confirm your diagnosis, treatment, potentially your discharge from cardiology, it can help to speed things up. We have secure file sharing systems where you can send these files to us in a safe way, so that we can share them with the insurer to support your life insurance application.

The Best Insurer

Unfortunately there isn’t one insurer that you can pick out and say – yes them, they’re the best one to go to if you have atrial fibrillation. There are also many types of life insurance and it’s almost like a jigsaw puzzle of building and interlocking everything from the insurance world, to make the finished piece to suit what you need. 

Our team of expert advisers are here to make sure that you get a life insurance policy that is going to do what you want it to do: financially take care of your loved ones when they need it most. We will research the insurance market for you, so that you don’t have to and give you a no obligation quotation for you to decide what feels right for you.