International Huntington's awareness day 2022
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International Huntington’s awareness day 2022
We are specialist insurance advisers, not everybody knows what that is but ultimately, we find protection insurance for people that are living with health conditions, work in hazardous occupations or do high risk pastimes. In this article I am going to focus on life insurance and critical illness cover, for people living with Huntington’s Disease or have a close family member that is diagnosed with the condition.
Managing director and specialist insurance adviser, Kathryn Knowles, created a number of short clips for the Scottish Huntington’s Association.
Video Transcript
Hi, everybody. My name is Kathryn Knowles and I’m a specialist insurance adviser. So what I do is help people to find insurances, and I also specifically help people with health conditions to understand what’s going to be available in the insurance market and also to kind of strip out some of the jargon and make things, hopefully, a bit easier to understand. I focus on things like life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection, and a couple of other things. So what I’m doing here is providing a video for the Scottish Huntington’s Association, just to try and debunk some of the, kind of, probably the myths that come around with insurances, and also just to answer some of the common queries that we get from people who’ve either been diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease or possibly somebody close to them has been. Hopefully you’ll find them helpful. If you do have any queries at all about anything that I’m saying, or want some more information, please do contact the Scottish Huntington’s Association. They’ll be able to let me know and I’ll be able to get back to you. Thank you.
There are a number of common misconceptions that we hope to debunk, as well as answer some common questions.
Video Transcript
A big question that we often get is I’ve got Huntington’s Disease, can I even get life insurance? It could be that people have already spoken to insurers or other advisers and being told that the life insurance isn’t available to them. But I’d love to really get across in this video is the fact that please don’t assume that you cannot get the insurances. You may see life insurance and think of it in one style, but there’s quite a few different styles of life insurance that you can get, but ultimately is always up to you as to what feels right for you. And there are many, many options within the market that not everybody has access to.
The other thing that I want to get across as well, I’m saying that is also to have realistic expectations. With many insurers, because you have Huntington’s Disease, it’s very likely that you won’t be offered the same premium as somebody who doesn’t have Huntington’s Disease. It may be that with more specialist approaches that you look at, it may be that insurers say, well, we can offer this, but we’re going to say that we will only offer it for X amount of years. And I know that may not sound ideal, but it’s important to know, I think it’s important to know what’s available. So even if it doesn’t sound ideal, even if in the end, you don’t really want to go ahead with anything, I think it’s quite empowering to know just for you to have all that information in front of you, so you can have that there. The other thing as well is that with specialist insurances, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to get silly expensive, and it doesn’t mean that the terms and conditions are going to be, in a sense, dodgy or anything like that. It is just, it’s just more specialist routes that an adviser would maybe be looking at for you. And obviously, they would be able to go through all of that information so that you can make a really clear and informed decision if this feels right for you.
A big question that we often get is “I have Huntington’s disease, can I even get insurance?”, it may be that you’ve already spoken with an insurer or another adviser and have been told that life insurance isn’t available to you but please don’t assume that you cannot get insurance at all. There are different types of insurance and many, many options that not everybody has access to, so whilst one insurance adviser may not be able to help, another may be able to recommend the ideal cover for you.
Whilst there are often options, it’s important to have realistic expectations. With many insurers, it is likely that you won’t be offered cover with the same premium as other people due to you having Hungtinton’s disease. Some insurers may only offer cover for a certain number of years, which is known as a restricted term. This may not be ideal and may be something you decide against, but it’s important that you are aware of all of the potential options.
Video Transcript
I’m often approached by people who have had a predictive test for Huntington’s disease, and they ask if they can have a critical illness cover policy that will cover them if they are diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Now, this is a really tricky conversation to have as an adviser, and, obviously, for the person who’s coming to me and wanting that help because within the UK critical illness market Huntington’s disease isn’t a listed condition. So these policies usually cover the diagnosis of typically at least 50 different medical conditions or situations, and it’s things like cancer, heart attack, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, things like that. Now, as I say, the thing is, and it’s very important to be clear, Huntington’s disease itself isn’t actually a listed condition. So it’s not a case of you being able to be covered for if you do develop Huntington’s disease. It’s just simply that it’s not available in those contracts. There is one part of the contracts called total permanent disability that may potentially, and I very clearly want to say may have the potential, to pay out if you are diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. The thing with that claimable condition is that your health must’ve deteriorated to a certain level for you to be able to claim on that. So it’s not a certain that you would actually be able to claim on that side of the policy. For somebody who has Huntington’s disease already, again, critical illness contracts don’t pay out for Huntington’s disease, but in any case, it’s one of those things where with these policies, say if I use an example of Parkinson’s disease, if someone has Parkinson’s disease and then takes out a critical illness policy, they wouldn’t then be able to claim on Parkinson’s disease because they’ve already had it. And that would have been the same with Huntington’s disease as well.
We are also often approached by people who have had a predictive test for Hungtington’s disease and are now wondering if they can get critical illness cover, believing that it will pay out a claim if they are officially diagnosed with Huntington’s disease in the future. This is a really tricky conversation to have as an adviser, because in most instances the answer is no, and the last thing that we want to do is give you negative news at a time when you are wanting to get all your finances in order. Within the UK critical illness policies usually cover around 50 conditions such as cancer, heart attack, stroke and Parkinson’s disease, but Huntington’s disease isn’t a named claimable condition.
Though claims for Huntington’s Disease are not typically covered within critical illness contracts, there is often a specific claimable condition known as total permanent disability (TPD), that might pay out if you were diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. For a person to be able to claim for total permanent disability, their health must have reached a certain level, that means that they can never work again or do specific day to day activities. Your ability to have TPD on your policy could be affected by your family medical history.
A family history of Huntington’s Disease can affect your insurance applications. This is if you have an immediate blood relative, parent or sibling, that has been diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease before the age of 60 or 65 depending upon the insurer. If you have had a negative predictive test you can let the insurer know and it might improve the insurance terms that you are offered, but there is no requirement to do so.
For a person who has already been diagnosed with Hungtinton’s disease, critical illness policies can be available, but there are specific eligibility criterias that must be met and you need to really go through the terms and conditions carefully.
Video Transcript
One of the things that people often ask us about is what to do with, like, what do you disclose to an insurer? It’s kind of a tricky one because obviously, you must be completely truthful and completely honest and open, and give them the information that they ask for. But you also don’t need to tell them things that they haven’t asked for. So if you do have Huntington’s Disease, that is something that is probably going to come up in a lot of insurance applications. The life insurance applications. Not all of them, but quite a few. And if you have had the genetic tests, there’s kind of a bit of a difference with those ones. So with the diagnostic tests where you have yourself maybe been symptomatic, you’ve maybe needed some investigations or treatment to see if you have Huntington’s Disease, then that is something where you will need to, in most likelihood, let the insurer know about it. Predictive tests can be different though. So if you have had a predictive test, whether or not it’s positive or negative, you do not need to tell the life insurer if you are applying for less than £500,000 of life insurance. If you have had a positive, predictive test and you are applying for more than £500,000 of life insurance, then it’s quite likely that you will need to let the insurer know. It’s also, you don’t have to, but if you have had a negative predictive test, then you can certainly let the insurer know about that, but there is no requirement for you to do so.
We are also often asked what a person needs to disclose to an insurer, which can be a tricky one as you must be open and honest but you also don’t need to tell the insurer anything that they haven’t asked for. Huntington’s disease will come up as a question in many applications. If you have had a diagnostic test, maybe because you were symptomatic or needed investigations or treatment to see if you have Hungtington’s disease, then you would need to disclose this with most insurers. But if you have had a predictive test, whether the results were positive or negative, you do not need to tell the life insurer if you’re applying for less than £500,000 life insurance.
Case study
- A woman in her early 20s came to us needing protection for her mortgage. Whilst she had no health conditions herself, her mum had been diagnosed with Huntington’s. We arranged a life insurance policy covering her for £250,000 for 35 years, with a premium of less than £10 per month.
Hopefully, this has helped answer any questions you might have about protection insurance if you have Huntington’s disease. If you would like to know more or still have an unanswered question, our advisers are on hand to help as much as possible.
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