Covid Unknowns Leave Survivors Fearing Life Insurance Rejection
- Insurers amending applications to ask about virus
- Survivors risk higher rates, rejections
Lise Beaudry, left, and Lisa Moyles in Stratford, Connecticut, on Nov. 27. Both were turned down for new life insurance policies shortly after testing positive for Covid-19.
Photographer: Angus Mordant/BloombergThe Covid-19 pandemic was barely underway in the U.S. when life insurance companies started wrestling with whether to sell new policies to people who survived the virus.
The Delaware Department of Insurance started seeing it in June. Companies filed requests to change their application forms to specifically ask applicants if they’d had Covid-19. The Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Commission—which uses a uniform set of standards to regulate insurance products for 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico—has approved 32 such requests since March. It’s also known as the Insurance Compact.