Insurance sector grants "right to be forgotten" to former cancer patients

Insuring people with a serious illness, or who have recovered from a serious illness, is often a difficult or impossible task. Due to the position of Assuralia published on 09 February 2021, the insurance sector will, from 2022, introduce an additional code of conduct that obliges insurers, in the context of an application for guaranteed income, to "forget the past" in certain cases for former cancer patients. This certainly does not resolve all problems, but it is an important signal from our sector.

You can find the press release here

"Since 1 February 2020, there has been a 'right to be forgotten' for outstanding balance insurance. From next year, the sector is extending that right of former cancer patients to guaranteed income insurance. Especially for the self-employed, the safety net of a guaranteed salary is very limited. In the event of illness, they risk falling into a financial black hole. That is why they often take out disability insurance known as 'guaranteed income'.

In concrete terms, this means that the insurer may no longer invoke the cancer to refuse the insurance application, exclude the cancer condition from insurance cover, or charge an extra premium. The person who is or was affected by a cancer condition will still have to disclose the illness when applying for guaranteed income insurance.

The conditions determining that the insurer may no longer take the cancer condition into account are clearly defined. For instance, a period of ten years must have elapsed since the successful completion of treatment. This is the date on which active treatment of the condition with surgery, radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy ended, without any further treatment being needed. The only exception concerns treatment of the preventive hormone therapy type, which may have taken place during the ten-year period. In addition, no relapse may have occurred during this ten-year period, and the candidate policyholder must not have been unable to work as a result of their cancer condition during those ten years."

Life Experts welcomes this initiative. In practice, we see that remaining professionally active after a serious illness runs into all kinds of practical obstacles, or even administrative misunderstanding. This is also true for insurance. Being able to offer normal guaranteed income cover to those affected (even though this is not immediate, and only after a waiting period of 10 years) is an important tool in the toolbox of solutions we can offer our clients.