Mortgage Protection for Cancer Survivors
A new Code of Practice on Mortgage Protection insurance for cancer survivors comes into effect from 6th December. This initiative is from Insurance Ireland, the representative body for Irish insurance companies.
From this date, providers of mortgage protection insurance will ignore a cancer diagnosis if treatment finished more than 7 years ago, or more than 5 years if the person was diagnosed before their 18th birthday.
This welcome initiative will hopefully help as many cancer survivors as possible obtain mortgage protection cover, without the fear that they might be discriminated against when making their application.
The insurance companies will disregard any disclosed cancer diagnosis where all the following circumstances apply:
- The application is for a new mortgage protection policy (decreasing term cover only)
- The new policy is for life assurance only. No additional benefits such as specified illness are included.
- The policy must be for the purpose of covering a mortgage on your principle private residence. It will not apply to mortgages for second or holiday homes or for buy-to-let properties.
- The application must be for the mortgage amount, up to a limit of €500,000. Any cover required in excess of this limit will have to be fully underwritten with the first €500,000 ignored per the Code.
- Cancer treatment must have ended more than 7 years prior to the application or more than 5 years prior to the application where the applicant was under 18 at the time of diagnosis.
If all the above criteria are met, the insurance company will disregard the cancer diagnosis when underwriting the application and no additional premium will be charged due to the cancer diagnosis. However, any other health conditions or medical history will still be underwritten by the insurance company and depending on the information provided, you could still find an additional premium charged or an application postponed or declined. This is a summary of the new code and in addition to the above terms and conditions, the definition of what constitutes end of treatment was drafted in consultation with an independent oncologist. According to Insurance Ireland over 90% of all life cover policies associated with a mortgage have a sum assured of €500,000 or less, so this must be seen as a welcome and significant initiative.
