Over half the UK's population believes they will be refused, or charged more, for protection if they...
Over half the UK's population believes they will be refused, or charged more, for protection if they are completely honest about lifestyle habits or minor ailments, according to Axa.
A non-disclosure survey, completed by YouGov, looked at nearly 2,000 adults in the UK in July this year and found common beliefs that consumers would be charged more for some medical ailments. This included 55% thinking raised blood pressure would lead to more expensive premiums, 46% believing the same for high cholesterol, 29% for sexually transmitted diseases, 39% for mild depression and 34% thinking an aching back or joints was going to increase the cost of a policy.
Iain Mallon, head of protection marketing at Axa Life, said the provider commissioned the report to illustrate the advantages of using tele-underwriting to capture information from customers.
He said: "People behave differently in different situations such as giving someone a paper application form to take away, an electronic form with the intermediary present or a consultation over the phone with tele-underwriting. We wanted to see how much people will talk about non-disclosure. Our evidence shows that paper non-disclosure is 5%, non-disclosure from electronic forms with the underwriter present is 3% and tele-underwriting non-disclosure is 0%."
He added: "While 57% have the propensity to non-disclose, if you put them into the right type of environment you can do something about it and deal with the right kind of issues in this position to fully disclose."
The research found that the younger generation were more likely to deliberately non-disclose with almost a quarter of 18-24 year olds saying this was something they had done compared to over-55s who were found to be the most accurate.
The most common item for non-disclosure on insurance applications was found to be alcohol intake with men being 30% more likely to be inaccurate about this when applying.
