Aviva is piloting Subject Access Requests to explore the benefits of obtaining customer's full medical reports for underwriting.
Aviva will act as the customer's representative in requesting records from their GP and will require additional written consent.
The SAR will only be obtained on applications where a general practitioners report (GPR) or a targeted general practitioners report (TGR) would be required for the underwriting assessment.
Richard Verdin, protection director at Aviva, said: "There are some advantages and disadvantages and the only way you will work out is while you are doing it.
"Medical reports can be 100s or pages long so it will be easy to miss something. We have to be very consistent in that nobody misses anything which will be down to thorough training."
The aim for Aviva will be faster underwriting, reduced likelihood of claims disputes and returning to the GP for missing information.
There will also be a potential reduction in overall medical expenditure; there is a maximum fee of £50 for each SAR, compared to a recommended fee of about £100 for a GPR.
Verdin added reports could be sent in a variety of forms which could create stumbling blocks that needed to be addressed.
He said: "Some want to send it in different forms, for example as a memory stick. Because of protected internal systems we cannot always just plug that in and deal with it easily."
