Lets Talk About Sex 2025

Lets Talk About Sex 2025

Ok, let’s be honest we both know that this headline was a shameless attempt to grab your attention. We will be talking about sex but maybe just not in the way that you imagined it.

Sex, specifically gender, does crop up a lot of places when it comes to life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection.

Life Insurance and Gender

When you apply for life insurance, critical illness cover or income protection within the UK you will be asked to say if you are male or female in your application. This can be quite difficult for people who are trans or who do not identify as male or female. It can feel as if the insurance world isn’t particularly welcoming. 

Some insurers have started to make changes to their applications and now ask for the gender that a person was assigned at birth. This is a far more supportive approach for some people, but it can still be an unsettling question for others. It is important to know that if a person has transitioned, most insurers will ask you for your actual gender, rather than the gender that you were assigned at birth.

The reasons that insurers ask for a male or female gender classification:

• There are some gender linked genetic conditions that are more likely to be inherited if you are male or female
• Potentially inheritable conditions can lead to a higher risk of claim on critical illness cover and income protection policies

Insurers will potentially charge more or place exclusions on critical illness cover and income protection policies, depending upon your gender and family medical history. This could sound unfair but it is done this way as insurance is based upon the risk of a claim. Ultimately, the insurer needs to price the insurance policies based upon your risk of claiming on the cover and having enough funds to pay out a claim to your or your loved ones.

Gender Pricing for Life Insurance

A while ago there was a big hoohah about men and women being charged different prices for life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection.  The argument was that gender should not factor into the cost of insurance and the insurance world had to change their pricing, but it kind of bit everyone in the bum.

Traditionally, men paid more for life insurance as they statistically tend to die at a younger age than women. On the other side women paid more for income protection as statistics showed that they tend to be ill and need to stop working more than men.

So, what happened? The insurers removed gender pricing but that didn’t mean that the cost of insurance came down, it went up. Women now pay the same price as men for life insurance (the higher amount) and men now pay the same amount as women for income protection (the higher amount).

We saw this change happen in action and there was a short window where women were rushing for life insurance while they could still get the cheaper price, and men rushing to get income protection before the price change. 

You might still hear that insurers do gender price and they do, for what is known as group based insurance policies. For insurances that cover death-in-service and enhanced sick pay benefits, insurers are still able to charge different prices for men and women. 

Pregnancy Related Illness and Critical Illness Cover

Back to sex in the traditional sense. Critical illness insurance often covers claims relating to children. You will find that some insurers cover a child from the time that they are born or once they are 30 days old. Insurers might also offer support for some pregnancy related complications. It really comes down to the insurer and the quality of their critical illness contract.

Some of the conditions that are potentially covered are:

• Cerebral palsy
• Cystic fibrosis
• Hydrocephalus
• Muscular dystrophy
• Spina bifida

It’s really important to know that to be eligible for claims relating to these conditions, you will usually have needed to have the critical illness policy in place before you became pregnant, maybe very early pregnancy. Essentially if you know that your child has been or is likely to be diagnosed with a critical illness that the insurer covers, the insurer is unlikely to cover a claim if you set up a policy once you already know about it.

Maternity Cover and Income Protection

Income protection is really interesting when it comes to maternity cover and pregnancy related complications. Ok, I say really interesting, I’m an insurance nerd so it is to me.

The options that you have when you are going to take maternity leave vary a lot across insurers. You can find that:

• The insurer says that your policy can remain active whilst you are on maternity leave and if you need to make a claim due to an illness or accident that happens, they might be able to consider it
• The insurer says that you can keep your income protection active, but cannot claim on it while you are on maternity leave

If you are told that you cannot claim on the income protection policy whilst you are on maternity leave, you might consider cancelling your insurance. That is understandable, why pay for something for 9-12 months that you can’t claim on. You might make this decision but it is really important to consider that you will be losing the premium you currently have, when you apply for income protection again you will be older and it will cost more. Also, if your health changes before you get back to work, you might find that the income protection policy now has exclusions or is potentially not available.

Applying for life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection comes with a lot of different options and outcomes. It’s important to know how to build your insurance policy to match your goals now and the future. Our award winning advisers are here to make sure that your insurance does what you want it to do, when you need it most.

Get in touch with us for a no obligation quotation today.

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