The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has decided to go no further with four of the six ...
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has decided to go no further with four of the six outstanding applications currently awaiting ratification from the Genetics and Insurance Committee (GAIC).
The ABI's decision comes at a time when a number of insurance companies have been criticised in the media for their continued use of genetic tests when assessing insurance applications.
Suzanne Moore, spokesperson for the ABI, said: "We decided that although the tests are reliable the number of people currently taking them at the moment is small. Also, the disease is often already apparent when people actually apply for insurance, so we did not want to go through the ratification procedures only for them to be used in such a limited way."
This decision by the ABI means that insurers who have already applied loadings due to information taken from the four genetic tests will now have to go back and make changes to the policies. But Ian Frater, head of media relations at Norwich Union, said: "We follow the ABI's code of practice on genetics and so do the majority of insurers. We are now looking at cases over the last few years, and if we applied a loading because of those tests we will refund the balance and re-insure them on different terms."
According to Frater, this is not going to be a large scale problem because, of the 150,000 life policies it wrote last year, only 30 of these fell into the genetic testing category. Of these, 23 actually received better terms, four fell under the moratorium of conditions that are not on the current list, and only three applications were loaded due to test results.
So far GAIC has deemed that only the test for Huntingdon's disease is reliable enough for insurers to use when assessing applications. However, it will continue to examine whether the tests for Alzheimer's disease and hereditary breast cancer are reliable enough to be used. Moore said: "We have always said that we would abide by what GAIC decides. If it said to stop using them we would tell insurers to stop, and likewise, if we decide not to apply for a test to be approved we would also tell them to stop. There will be no suppression of the use of the tests in the meantime."
But Virgin Direct remains openly sceptical of the use of any genetic tests in assessing applications, and feels that a single common approach is needed. Andrew Stronach, communications manager at Virgin Direct, said: "Rushing in to the use of genetic tests with obscene haste will have the net effect of damaging consumer confidence in the industry. Genetic testing is still in its infancy. We gave evidence to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee proposing a three-year moratorium on all life insurers using genetic tests in insurance. At the moment, insurers are adopting a piecemeal and chaotic approach to the use of genetic testing."
The four withdrawn tests are: familial adenomatous polyposis, myotonic dystopy, multiple endocrine neoplasia, and hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy type one.
