Gender & Life Insurance
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Gender Identity & Life Insurance
When you apply for life insurance in the UK the systems currently have the option for you to be male or female. I know that this will not be ok for many people, but it is unfortunately the way that the market currently works.
There are reasons for this and I will explain one of them in the critical illness cover section, but I know that this still doesn’t help you when you’re applying for cover. It is something that we are actively pushing for change within our industry.
As well as the insurers systems asking if you are male or female, you will also often find that they do not offer a broad range of titles for your name. Whilst the insurers systems work this way, we don’t.
Important ways that we can support you:
- Our systems will allow us to record your true gender and true title
- We will ask you your gender now, not the gender you were assigned at birth
- We will ask you your name now and will not ask you for your dead name
- We will use your preferred pronouns when speaking with you
Whilst most insurers will specifically ask if you are male or female, for life insurance it is very unlikely that this will cause any difference to the terms that you are offered.
Insurers must now price life insurance the same way regardless of gender.
The majority of the time your life insurance will be offered at standard terms, this means no premium increase. There can sometimes be situations where this isn’t the case. There are times that mental health can cause the premiums for life insurance to change. Anxiety, stress and depression do not necessarily increase the premiums. You might find that if you have had stronger mental health symptoms in the past such as inpatient treatment, suicidal thoughts or more, that it’s incredibly important to research the right insurer for you.
If you have recently had gender reassignment surgery, the insurer will want to see that you are fully recovered, just like they would for any operation. In the past the insurers would ask to see a copy of your gender reassignment certificate, but they are no longer allowed to ask this of you.
Our award winning advisers will support you every step of the way, in finding the right insurer and best life insurance for you.
Gender & Critical Illness Cover
Critical illness cover pays out a cash lump sum of money, if you are diagnosed with a medical condition that is listed in the insurer’s claims set e.g. cancer, heart attack, stroke.
It’s very likely that you will be able to arrange critical illness cover with no problems at all and at standard terms. But we still have male and female gender requirements on the insurance applications.
One of the reasons that insurers ask if you are male or female is because there can sometimes be medical conditions that you are more likely to develop in certain genders, if someone in your family had them.
Breast cancer is a good example. If you are born with the physical body of a female and a close family member had breast cancer at a young age, then insurers can take this into account when assessing your application. In this situation it can mean that they place a breast cancer exclusion on your critical illness cover.
The male and female gender selection in your critical illness cover, is certainly not perfect. You might have physically been born a male, but are female and this can then lead to you seeing this kind of exclusion on your policy, even though you are actually at no higher risk.
The insurers systems have not yet reached a stage where they can account for this. In part this is because they simply do not ask if your gender has changed over time.
Gender can have a very specific influence over the terms that you are offered for critical illness cover. This is led by medical conditions experienced by family members before age 65. This is usually within the more female specific conditions such as breast cancer, cervical cancer and ovarian cancer. There can also be some implications for multiple sclerosis.
The key thing is knowing where to put your critical illness cover application, so that you get the best options for critical illness cover.
Our expert advisers will provide you with a no obligation quotation, so that you can decide on what feels right for you.
Gender & Income Protection
Income protection pays you a replacement of your monthly income, if you are unable to work due to ill health.
You should be able to arrange income protection with no difficulties, as insurers must treat all genders equally when applying for insurance.
Not always, but there can be times where people who do not sit within cisgenders, are more likely to experience mental health conditions. It is quite common for insurers to exclude claims relating to mental health, if someone has experienced this in the past.
This is not a positive thing to hear, but it’s important to be open and clear with you about what you might be told when you apply for income protection.
Some insurers will reduce your income protection premiums if they do put on a mental health exclusion. An exclusion can make people question the value of income protection and we can talk you though just how important this insurance is.
You can speak with any of our industry trained advisers who will help build an income protection policy that matches you and your work.
Gender Identity
We live in a world where gender is no longer male and female. Being a gender that does not fall within the male and female labels, can lead people to have difficulties as they are growing up and trying to identify who they are.
Also: Male, female, non-binary, cisgender, non-trans, trans, transgender man, transgender woman, transexual
Linked with: Gender reassignment surgery, mental health, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria
Below is a list of specific gender linked information that you will find on this site:
Common Questions
Hi, thank you for reaching out to us. I completely understand your hesitation, insurance is not well known for being empathetic and supportive. But, there have been so many changes over the years and most insurers have taken big steps to support LGBTQ+ members of the community. They now often have specific inclusion groups within the company to really celebrate colleagues and focus upon being an inclusive community.
That being said, insurers still require people to select that they are either male or female when applying for things like life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection. They will not ask you about your gender assigned at birth, but they are unfortunately limited to the two gender choices.
Let’s plan a time to chat and we can talk about how the insurance application will work and if it doesn’t feel right for you, we can stop at anytime.
Hi, it’s lovely to hear from you. When you are applying for life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection you do need to tell the insurer about any surgeries that you have planned. They will usually postpone your application until the surgery has happened.
But planned surgery can be considered in quite a few ways. You might have your surgery planned for 3 weeks time, this is something that most insurers are going to want to know about. Or it might be that you know you will have the surgery some day, but there are no plans, you are still a while away from it happening. This doesn’t always need to be included in your application, but it is essential that you check this.
There can sometimes be insurance to help with gender reassignment surgery, but it is very expensive and often doesn’t actually save you any money in the long run. I wrote a blog on this that you might find helpful. It is not something that we can advise you on, but we can put you in touch with people that can. You can find the blog here.
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Dr Kathryn Knowles Phd
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This page was written by Dr Kathryn Knowles Phd, an award-winning insurance adviser. To read more about Kathryn please see her bio here
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