Joint whole of life on second death
GolfPutt21
Member
An adviser in my office mentioned today that for a joint whole of life 2nd death policy that previous ill health/ current ill health isn't taken into account for underwriting if 1 of the lives assured has a medical condition.
Has anyone come across this before or can provide any input on this?
Comments
Did they also mention that you get a free pen?
Don't providers medically underwrite everyone based on age and sum assured irrespective of any health issues? I can't confirm 100% that your adviser is wrong, but I have never heard that they don't bother with underwriting if one life assured hasn't got/had a condition.
I've heard something similar to your adviser @GolfPutt21 but I'm not 100% sure how it works.
It's something to do with the plan paying out on second death.
As a result the person with the longest life expectancy is the one that the provider will most likely need to pay out on so it doesn't really matter how impaired the 1st life is.
The adviser is right. You can write a policy on a JLSD basis with a decline on one life, meaning the premium is effectively based on a single life only. Still exactly the same terms as a normal JLSD policy, but more expensive. Just get a single life quote from your favoured portal to get an indicative premium.
You still have to go through the full application process, but if you know what the underlying condition is, speak with underwriters directly and you can usually avoid any medical/GP requests. That said, the underwriting system should default to a decline anyway if it is serious/obvious.
Thanks all! I have done some more digging and seems like this is the case as stated by @TomLloyd_Read ! Interesting as I had never heard of this before about 2 weeks ago but could be valuable to lots of people as WOL is become more and more common.