Update: \"The right to be forgotten\" valid for guaranteed income insurance from February 2022

Since 1 February 2020, a "right to be forgotten" has already existed for debt balance insurance. Last year this website already mentioned that this right would be extended to guaranteed income insurance. We hereby confirm that from February 2022, Assuralia is extending the right to be forgotten to guaranteed income insurance. Former cancer patients often received no guaranteed income insurance, or only with difficulty, or had to pay high additional premiums, in the best case. The new arrangement is certainly not a free pass to be able to take out a policy, but it is at least a sector agreement, and offers our clients some guidance as to what to expect when applying for guaranteed income insurance.

Assuralia's code of conduct relates to supplementary insurance against the risk of incapacity for work linked to a pension policy ("AVRIR" as it is called), or as a standalone guaranteed income policy (a so called "GI" policy). It does not matter whether you are an employee or self-employed. It does not matter whether the policy is taken out as a private individual or within a professional context.

What must a policyholder do for a newly underwritten policy or a policy to be amended?

In accordance with the Insurance Act (4/4/2014), the candidate insured must disclose accurate information about their medical history when underwriting a policy or when amending a policy. This is already legally regulated as such today, and this legal principle is of course not overridden by a sector agreement among insurers themselves. Article 58 of that law states the following:

"The policyholder is obliged, when concluding the agreement, to accurately disclose all circumstances known to him that he should reasonably regard as information that may influence the insurer's assessment of the risk. However, he does not have to disclose to the insurer circumstances that the insurer already knew or should reasonably have known. Genetic data may not be disclosed."

How does an insurer handle this?

The insurer may not take a cancer condition into account (read below what this precisely entails) if all of the conditions below are met:

1. A period of ten years has passed since the successful completion of the treatment, that is to say the date of completion of the active treatment of the cancer condition with surgery, radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy, without necessary additional treatment. The only exception is a possible continued treatment of the preventive hormone therapy type during the period of ten years. 2. During the period of ten years, the candidate insured must not have relapsed. 3. During the aforementioned period of ten years, he must not have been incapacitated for work as a result of his cancer condition.

If the three conditions are met, an insurer may no longer refuse the insurance on the grounds of that earlier cancer condition, or exclude the cancer pathology from coverage, or charge an extra premium, or provide for a longer waiting period for this condition.

What an insurer may still do:

1. The insurer may exclude other existing conditions or charge an additional premium for them. 2. An insurer may exclude from coverage the permanent economic and/or physiological incapacity for work and/or disability resulting from cancer that already exists at the time of concluding the insurance agreement or of joining an existing occupational insurance.

https://www.komoptegenkanker.be/blog/recht-om-vergeten-te-worden-voortaan-ook-voor-verzekering-gewaarborgd-inkomen

https://www.assuralia.be/nl/25-sectorinfo/gedragsregels/1007-gedragscode-inzake-verzekeringen-gewaarborgd-inkomen-recht-om-vergeten-te-worden-voor-ex-kankerpatienten