Life insurance for people with Crohn’s disease

Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel condition affecting the digestive tract that can affect the mouth, stomach, bowel or anus. According to the NHS, typical symptoms include:

• diarrhoea
• blood or mucus in stools
• stomach pain
• constipation
• pain in your bottom
• fatigue or feeling unwell
• appetite and weight loss
• delayed growth/puberty in children
  

Elsewhere in the body, symptoms can include joint pain, irritated eyes and skin rashes.

Typical flare-ups, which can be mild to severe, last anything from a few days to several months followed by periods of remission. There is no cure for the disease.

Crohn’s disease affects people of all ages, though it tends to start in teenagers and young adults. Research suggests that people can have an inherited predisposition to the disease, but it is also thought to be associated with a faulty immune response or an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the gut as well as environmental factors, including smoking.

Crohn’s, together with ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease, affects around 500,000 people in the UK, according to the most recent research from Crohn’s and Colitis UK.   

It differs from ulcerative colitis, which causes inflammation specifically to the colon and rectum, with small ulcers forming that can bleed and produce pus, rather than the patches elsewhere in the gut that are found with Crohn’s disease.

While some symptoms, such as diarrhoea and stomach pain, are like Crohn’s, others include the need to poo frequently, mouth ulcers, swollen fatty bumps under the skin and osteoporosis. This inflammatory condition can be triggered by stress, and gut infections can occasionally cause it.

Can you get life insurance with Crohn’s disease?

It is possible to get life insurance if you have Crohn’s disease, and you may be able to pay standard premiums if your symptoms are mild and well-managed.

But this is not always the case: insurers will factor in that Crohn’s disease is a lifelong condition that can be severe, will require ongoing treatment, may lead to future surgery and potentially shorten a person’s life, so it can result in higher premiums or in life insurance being declined.

Your application will more likely be rejected if you have only recently been diagnosed with Crohn’s, which means it’s too early for insurers to know how often you may have flare-ups or how severe your symptoms might be, or if you will need surgery for the condition.

If you have been diagnosed with Crohn's disease, life insurance providers will classify it as a pre-existing condition when you apply for cover. You may be able to buy life cover on standard premiums if your Crohn’s disease is mild and well-managed. But expect to pay higher premiums if you have more frequent and severe episodes.

There are circumstances when insurers may reject your application – for example, Crohn’s disease can cause some people to lose weight due to malabsorption of nutrients and reduced appetite due to pain and nausea, so if the disease is active and you are applying for insurance and have a very low weight or BMI, it can lead to insurers refusing cover. 

During the life insurance underwriting process insurers will want to know more about your family history, including whether parents or siblings also have or had Crohn’s disease. This is because there is evidence to suggest that it may well follow a similar pattern in terms of its progression and severity as that of close family members.

They will also ask whether you have had surgery for Crohn’s disease within the past six months or have surgery planned. If this is the case, you will generally need to wait for six months post-surgery before insurers will consider your application for life insurance. Insurers will also want to know if you are regularly taking oral steroids for the illness, with some insurers rejecting an application if this is the case.

Other reasons for life insurance to be declined might be when Crohn’s patients are fed nutrients through a tube or when the disease impacts their liver function.

Insurers will ask for further details about your Crohn’s disease diagnosis. Below are some questions that may come up (though the list is not exhaustive):

• When were you first diagnosed with the disease?
• What part of the bowel is affected?
• How much of the bowel is affected?
• When did you last have a flare-up?
• How long does a flare-up last?
• How severe is the disease?
• What medication are you taking for it?
• Have you had surgery or do you have it planned?
• Are you waiting for a hospital referral or test results?
• Which parts of the body are affected?
• What other symptoms do you have that are linked to Crohn’s?
• Have you ever been hospitalised with the condition? 
• Have you been off work sick with the disease?
• Is your Crohn’s disease preventing you from working?

Will a life insurance provider need medical evidence for Crohn’s disease?

If you can provide detailed information on your original diagnosis and hospital records of medications, treatments and operations, this may be sufficient to get a life insurance quote. However, it is not unusual for insurers to ask for a report from your GP, and in more complicated cases a medical examination may be required.

Living with Crohn’s disease is not the only factor that will affect the cost of your life insurance. Insurers will also consider your age, medical history, occupation, lifestyle and hobbies, and the type and level of life insurance you require.

The severity and frequency of flare-ups and how well your Crohn’s disease is controlled are of course key factors, so someone in their 30s who was diagnosed many years ago whose symptoms are well controlled without any flare-ups in recent years may be able to find a life insurance policy at standard rates.  

However, if you have more severe symptoms and recent flare-ups, where treatment involves medication, such as steroids or immunosuppressants, or you have had an operation in the past, you can expect premiums to increase. As a rough guide, in the above type of scenarios, you could see them rise, on average, by 50%. 

But premiums can be much higher if an applicant has had a more complex history of the disease. This shows the importance of shopping around or using a specialist insurance broker. 

What happens to my existing life insurance if I’m diagnosed with Crohn’s disease?

If you are diagnosed with Crohn’s disease while you have a current life insurance policy, then your insurer will pay out if you die while the policy is active. It’s not essential but letting your insurer know about your diagnosis could make life easier for your beneficiaries if they need to make a claim.

While life insurance will give your loved ones the financial security that they will be protected if you were to die during the policy, critical illness cover and income protection insurance could give you peace of mind while you are living with Crohn’s disease. 

Critical illness cover

The benefit of critical illness cover is that insurers will provide you with a tax-free lump sum if you are diagnosed with one of the critical illnesses listed in your policy. These include serious illnesses that have a significant impact on your life, such as heart attack, stroke and cancer. As life and critical illness insurance work well together, people often buy them at the same time.

But if you have been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, you will find it harder to get critical illness cover and if you do, expect your premiums to be higher – even if your symptoms are well managed. You may not be eligible at all if your symptoms are severe with more than one or two flare-ups each year.

What’s more, Crohn’s disease and conditions linked to it may be excluded either because it is a pre-existing condition or because some insurers consider it a serious illness rather than a critical one.

Income protection insurance

If you are unable to work due to an illness or injury, income protection insurance provides you with a regular income until you are well enough to go back to work or the policy ends.

With the increased chance of needing to take sick leave because of the chronic nature of Crohn’s disease, it’s quite likely insurers will reject applications for income protection. If you can find an insurer that does offer it, premiums will be much higher and the pre-agreed deferred period – the time you must wait after going on sick leave before you can make a claim – will often be longer (usually a minimum of 13 weeks).

If you have had surgery for Crohn’s disease and have been in remission for some time, you may be able to get Crohn’s included in your income protection plan though premiums will be higher.

Private health insurance

You can take out private health insurance – it’s just that your Crohn’s disease diagnosis will be a pre-existing condition and therefore will be excluded from the plan. This is because private medical insurance is designed to cover acute conditions, whereas the chronic nature of Crohn's disease means it requires ongoing treatment.

Waiver of premium

With life insurance and other protection policies, you could add on a waiver of premium, which means you can stop paying your monthly premiums if you are unable to work due to illness or injury – but your policy will remain active. It’s something you need to sign up for at the start of your policy.

Whether you’ll be eligible if you have Crohn’s disease depends on the insurer; some consider the risk of needing time off work due to illness to be too high.

How to buy life insurance with Crohn’s disease

If you have Crohn’s disease and are looking for life insurance, getting help from a specialist insurance broker could make a big difference. A broker will know each life insurer underwrites applicants with Crohn’s disease, so you can find the most suitable cover at the right price.

To get a personalised life insurance quote or speak with a life insurance expert please complete our form.