Life Tele-interview on health issues for Mortgage Protection?

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sadie

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Is in a normal practice now to be asked to do a telephone interview with a nurse when applying for Mortgage Protection? They send you a transcript then for you to sign. I never had to do this before, if they had any health queries they used to just send back another more specific form?
I just don't fancy it much. Do all insurers do this now or is it just some of them? Can I refuse and ask for a form instead? I am already submitting the usual medical tick list etc.
 
Most insurers will offer an alternative of a standard proposal form with medical questions. Query it with the insurer, if they refuse then look at a company that will offer this.
 
Thanks. I already have another matching quote with a company who don't do the telephone interviews.
With the stress of a house purchase, we don't need to be waiting for a nurse to interview us and then being afraid of saying 'well I had a headache last week' and then them having to send me for a brain scan or something and then refusing cover (ok - exaggerating but that's what it feels might happen).
 
If you have a medical condition then the normal practice used to be to contact your gp but that could take weeks to get the answer back so some insurers are using a nurse to ask the specific questions to speed it up.

Other alternative is to give all information you have on a condition at the time of proposing. i.e. medication taken, dates of last doc visits, type of investigations done, and send any copies of medical reports you may have. i.e. cholesterol/blood pressure readings.

The company may still need to go back to your gp for a report, depending on the information given or if a very high level of cover.
 
I have found that many customers are uncomfortable with tele-underwriting. In some cases it can be unavoidable for income protection but most of the time there is a paper alternative which can be done in your own time. Clients often have to check their medical history records and can get flustered if they are asked a question they dont immediately know off the top of their head.

While I respect the right for insurance companies to collect information by any means they chose, I tend to concur with the original poster that completing a proposal form and if necessary writing additional medical information by way of an additional note if you cant fit all the information on the form is more favoured by people in general.
 
Alternative to a teleinterview is a GP report. A GP report is fine when you have an efficient GP but if you have one that takes 6 weeks to get around to completing and returning the form you'll wish for something more efficient.

Many complain about teleunderwritng.

Although GPs received an increase in fees for completing medical reports their part of the bargain was that they would complete reports within 10 days. Problem is many see a patient every 10 mins and completing a medical report doesn't make financial sense to them when they can make more money on the 10 min job. Next.
 
We had awful trouble trying to get our GP to complete a medical report for the social welfare. He was just not interested.
 
Don't forget if a Doctor gives an adverse report then he/she becomes front line with an angry patient who has an insurance policy or social welfare claim rejected so it must be hard on them sometimes.
 
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