Death insurance: what should be declared in a medical questionnaire?

Before signing a contract that includes death insurance, the insurer may ask you to complete a medical questionnaire or health questionnaire.

The purpose of this questionnaire is to allow the insurer to know your health condition in order to adapt the amount of the contribution to your situation.

Death insurance is often mandatory for guarantee a home loan. It can sometimes be a condition for obtaining a consumer credit. The death insurance of theborrower insurance is a protection for your loved ones, because it is the insurer who will repay the bank if you die before the end of the loan.

You can also voluntarily take out death insurance, as a precaution. Death insurance is then offered in a provident insurance contract. Depending on your policy, the insurer will pay a principal or annuity for example, to pay for your children's education or to cover everyday expenses after your death.

There is no single medical questionnaire template, each insurer has the right to ask any questions they deem relevant about your current or past health condition. But questions about genetic characteristics are prohibited.

The information to be provided is progressive, a positive response may lead to more specific questions. Questions may include:

• Your lifestyle and risk factors (tobacco or alcohol consumption, sports practices)
• Your current diseases and treatments (e.g. diabetes, asthma, hypertension...)
• Your medical history (surgery, hospitalization, work stoppage...).

Often, insurers ask you to fill out a simplified questionnaire. It's 1^er level of information. You can easily fill out this questionnaire alone.

But there are also questionnaires by pathology (depending on the disease you reported) with more detailed questions. To fill it exactly you can ask for help from your doctor.

For example, the most common questions in the simplified questionnaire are:

• What is your body mass index (height/weight ratio)?
• Are you suffering from a chronic or long-term illness (diabetes, hypertension, etc.)?
• Are you taking permanent medical treatment (daily medications)?
• Have you had a depression in the last 5 years?
• Have you had a work stoppage of more than 3 months in the last 5 years?
• Do you have a medical history (recent surgery, long-term hospitalization, etc.)?

Depending on the answers you give, the insurer may ask you for additional information and may require you to make medical examinations (laboratory tests, urinalysis, cardiological examinations, etc.)

After reviewing the medical risks you have declared, the insurer can make the following decisions:

• Agree to insure you without special conditions
• Agree to insure provided you agree to pay a overprime
• Accept to insure yourself, but excluding the risks related to the consequences of certain diseases or events
• Refuse to insure yourself.

If you make a false declaration or if you deliberately hide a risk by answering the questionnaire, the insurer may request the cancelation of the contract to refuse to pay the capital or the planned annuity.

If the cancelation is ordered by the court, the insurer has the right to keep the contributions that have been paid. He can also claim the contributions corresponding to the period up to the date of cancelation of the contract.

If you forget to report certain items or make an inaccurate statement by negligence or error, the consequences vary depending on whether the situation was discovered before or after a claim: