Depression + Life cover for mortgage

Dave!

Hi guys,

A friend of mine is going through the mortgage approval process, and received the loan offer and contracts recently. One of the conditions of the mortgage is to have life cover.

He has a recent history of mild depression and has been on medication for it for a year or two, so it's being managed, etc.

He is wondering is this something that would have to be revealed in applying for life cover? Can it be concealed, or would the insurance company be able to find out somehow? Presumably the information is confidential between you and your GP?

Can cover be refused on the basis of depression? I've heard that it can (in theory anyway), but I'd be surprised that there's not more uproar if that is the case - contributes to stigmatisation, etc

Thanks

phormium

It has to be declared on the life cover application form, any questions re medication or doctors visits etc need to be answered truthfully otherwise it's money down the drain as the policy would be invalidated for 'non disclosure' if there was a claim.

The form isn't going to ask too many details, the answers to the medication & doc attendance question will trigger a form to go to gp for completion. This is the norm for any sort of illness whether minor or major.

If cover is refused for any illness or premium increased it is to do with risk as assessed by the life company and not some sort of discrimination, equally you could say that former cancer patients were being stigmatised when refused or loaded for cover.

When filling the form if you are doing it with a physical person in an insurance office or similar you can ask to take it away to complete that section and post back directly to the life company yourself if you don't want that person to see what you write. Any correspondence between the doctor and the life company will not be disclosed to anyone but yourself other than the outcome effect if any on the policy, the medical reasons behind it will not be disclosed.

Goat the dote

I don’t know about mortgage cover, but I have life assurance with a declared history of not so mild depression. They placed a small loading on my policy, so to come in at the same monthly price as my husband, we reduced my cover from 250k to 180k, if I remember correctly.

I think with either of our cover it has to be in place a year before they pay out on a suicide claim, not sure if that’s just a company decision or the policy across the board.