With March being Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, Zurich’s Nicky Bray explains why family history is important – and how it is assessed in underwriting.
Prostate Cancer Awareness Month puts a spotlight on one of the most common cancers affecting men – and a recurring point of confusion in underwriting: what insurers really mean by ‘family history’.
“Some people provide far too much information about distant relatives, while others provide very little and don’t understand why we ask the questions we do,” says Nicky Bray, chief underwriter at Zurich.
“We don’t require a full family tree. We’re trying to understand whether there’s a significant inherited risk that could affect someone during the term of the policy.”
For underwriters, the focus is not on every condition that has ever appeared in a family, but on patterns that suggest an increased likelihood of early diagnosis or death.