Diabetes Awareness Week 2020

Diabetes Awareness week is organised by Diabetes UK and is designed to raise awareness of the condition and to encourage people to share their experience of living with Diabetes.

One such experience maybe the problem of getting Life Assurance and or Income Replacement. Pulse are specialists in arranging Life Assurance for Applicants who are experiencing problems getting the cover they require from the standard market.

Diabetes is an illness that varies greatly in severity. The key to living well with the condition is control and control predominantly refers to blood sugar levels, or HbA1c.  I used to work, for many years, with a colleague who had developed diabetes at an early age. He has retired now but has always been rigorous in his control. I never knew him to miss a day’s work through illness!

With good control (and therefore avoiding some of the horrendous complications that poor control can evoke), diabetes should not be a barrier to obtaining Life cover or Income Replacement.

But diabetes is often associated with other problems such as High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Height/weight issues. The combination of illnesses can make obtaining cover challenging. That is where Pulse comes in with expertise in writing these type of combination risks. The cases below are examples where we have been successful.

Female 67

Diabetes & High Blood Pressure

£350k over 10 years

£79 pcm

 

Female 41

Diabetes, Depression & Cholesterol

£200k over 5 years

£71 pcm

 

 

Male 64

Diabetes & Heart Disease

£239k over 10 years

£487 pcm

 

 

Female 33

Diabetes, Gout, Kidney Disease

£150k over 3 years

£50.50 pcm

 

Male 51

Diabetes & BMI

£33k over 25 years

£17.41 pcm

Male 65

Diabetes, High Blood Pressure & Heart Attack

£80k over 5 years

£87.96 pcm

During the current Pandemic crisis, underwriters are continually adjusting their underwriting criteria. At the moment some underwriters may postpone decisions for 6 months for applicants over the age of 60 or the risk appetite for applicants who have an adverse medical history may be reduced. And sometimes obtaining medical evidence may take longer than usual as a result the suspension of face to face medical exams.  Pulse underwriters have experience in dealing with unusual situations and because of the individual handling of each case it is often easier to reach an underwriting solution so that both client and underwriter’s needs are met.

I recently listened in on a Webinar at which the speaker was Sir John Bell, the distinguished immunologist and geneticist. He spoke, in the main, about the development of a vaccine for Covid 19 and about therapies that are being developed to improve the treatment the virus. He referred briefly to the fact that Diabetes patients seem to do less well than others when they are affected by the virus. He said that at present the reason was not yet understood.

Against this background of the current understanding of Covid19 it is not surprising that some underwriters may postpone decisions for 6 months for applicants over the age of 60 or who have existing medical conditions.

And sometimes obtaining medical evidence may take longer than usual as a result the suspension of face to face medical exams.

In any event, if there is a significant delay in obtaining medical evidence or if an application is postponed Pulse can provide Accidental Death cover as a short term stop gap or even as a top up. Depending on the justification of the sum insured we can write up to £2m per person on our binder and higher limits can be placed directly into Lloyd’s.

We cannot help everyone. But we will do our very best for every inquiry that comes to us.

For more information or to request a quote please contact our team:

[email protected]

01280 841430

You can also find additional information on the products we can offer in respect of different types of diabetes below:

Type 1

Type 2

Diabetes Insipidus

Gestational Diabetes