Family medical history, what do I need to disclose?

Family medical history, what do I need to disclose?

An application for protection insurance will ask a range of questions, with some of them asking about your family medical history. And there’s a good reason for this too.

Insurers will ask about your family medical history, as this might indicate if you are at a higher risk of making a claim on your policy. Now, this doesn’t include every single person in your family. This is usually just immediate family, being your blood-related parents or siblings. 

When you are asked questions about family medical history the application is often worded ‘Have any of your natural parents or siblings…’ we try to avoid this terminology as there are times that this can be insulting, such as when someone is adopted.

Insurers also don’t make a habit of looking deeply into the medical history of each immediate family member, they are looking for certain things. 

You might be asked questions about cancers, heart attacks or strokes before your family member has reached the age of 65 (or sometimes 60, depending on the insurer). There can be a number of other conditions too such as Huntington’s disease, diabetes, polycystic kidney disease, Parkinson’s, and more; potentially any hereditary condition. 

Each insurer can have slightly different questions, but they will usually ask you about a set list of conditions that they are particularly looking for. They won’t be asking for your family member’s full medical history.

Predictive vs diagnostic testing

There are often questions about what does and doesn’t need to be included in an insurance application. Genetic testing is one that often pops up.

Many insurers do not ask about predictive genetic tests that you have undertaken, whether the outcome was positive or negative. We have written an article about genetic testing for the BRCA gene that you might find interesting. 

There are some exceptions though.

If you have had a predictive test for Huntington’s disease and you are applying for more than £500,000 of life insurance, or £300,000 of critical illness cover, then you need to declare this with most insurers. Our MD Kathryn Knowles has produced a number of videos about this for the Scottish Huntington’s Association, which can be found on our International Huntington’s awareness day 2022 blog. In this video she talks about predictive vs diagnostic testing.

It’s a little bit difficult to say exactly what terms you might be offered if you have a family medical history to disclose on your protection insurance application. That’s because the circumstances can vary massively.

If you have disclosed that a family member had been diagnosed with a certain condition before the age of 65, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will pay more for your policy. For example, if there has been one family member who was diagnosed with diabetes or skin cancer. This alone isn’t likely to increase the premium of a life insurance policy so you could be looking at standard terms.

On the other hand, there are times where family medical history can result in the price being increased. This is more likely to happen with conditions such as Huntington’s disease, polycystic kidney disease, motor neurone disease and where multiple family members have had conditions such as familial hypercholesterolemia, heart attacks and strokes. 

You are more likely to see a premium increase or an exclusion on a critical illness policy, due to a family member’s medical history. If you have had a family member with cancer at what the insurers consider to be a young age, you might find that some place an exclusion on the policy for claims relating to the cancer. This is why using an adviser that knows the market and has access to underwriters at the insurers, is so important, to make sure that we can get you the best terms possible and hopefully avoid such exclusions.

Applications for life insurance and critical illness cover are assessed quite similarly. The insurer will look at the disclosure and judge if there is an increased risk of you being diagnosed with the same condition or having a need to claim on the policy. 

When it comes to income protection, the insurer will want to know if there is anything that will make you more likely to have time off work. It is usually your personal health that will play a bigger role in the income protection terms that you’re offered. There may be times where the price is increased or there’s an exclusion on the policy because of your family medical history. 

Our point of view is that there is no hardship in doing the research and finding out what is possible. An exclusion is never nice to hear, but with income protection there are so many potential times that you can claim on it, that it’s really worth having a good look at even if there is an exclusion.

Case study

Freddie came to Cura in his early 20s as a non smoker, and we identified a need for life insurance based on his circumstances. He had approached us for a number of reasons, one being his family medical history. 

An immediate family member (a parent or sibling) had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and a seperate immediate family member had received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Both of these are things to be disclosed on an application if the diagnoses had been received before the age of 65. Another thing he had disclosed was anxiety and depression, and a number of years before coming to us there had been a suicide attempt. 

We arranged a life insurance policy for Freddie, covering him for £240,000 for 40 years with a monthly premium of around £14.

If you have any questions about how family medical history might play a role in your insurance options, or if you’ve previously struggled to find the protection insurance that you need, we have a number of advisers happy to help.

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