The Insurer Wrote to My GP and Then Said No

If your life insurance was declined after the insurer wrote to your GP, the first thing to understand is what that report actually was — because it is far narrower than most people fear. An insurer does not receive a photocopy of your entire medical history. It receives a targeted report, written by your GP with your written consent, answering the specific questions the underwriter asked. The decision turned on the answers to those questions, not on your whole life laid open.

That distinction matters, because it tells you where to look next. A decline is not the end of the road and it is not a verdict on you as a person. It is one insurer's answer, based on a defined set of information, and there are concrete things you can do: check that the information was accurate, find out whether you were declined or merely postponed, and take the case to someone who places harder-to-cover risks for a living.

This page explains what a GP report contains and why it is not your full file, what rights you have to see it, how to tell a decline from a postponement, and the three moves that are left once a refusal has already landed on your doormat.

What a GP report actually is

When an application raises something an underwriter cannot settle from your answers alone, the insurer may ask for a General Practitioner's Report, usually shortened to a GPR. It is a form sent to your GP with your written consent, posing a defined list of questions. Your GP answers those questions and returns the form; the insurer normally pays the fee for it.

The key word is targeted. The GP is not asked to send your notes wholesale. They are asked, for example, about the condition you declared, the dates of relevant consultations, your current medication, any referrals, the results of specific tests, and your general state of health now. A good report is a focused summary against the underwriter's questions, and no more. What your GP can and cannot pass on is worth knowing in its own right, and we set it out in what your GP can actually tell a life insurer.

Why the insurer wrote to your doctor at all

Insurers do not seek a GP report on every application; they cost money and take time, so one is requested when something specific needs verifying or filling in. Common triggers are a declared medical condition the underwriter wants dated and detailed, a medication that implies a condition, a hospital referral, a set of test results, or an answer that needs corroborating against the record.

It is worth saying plainly that a report being requested is not itself a bad sign. Many applications that go to a GP report are then accepted, sometimes on standard terms. The report is the underwriter gathering facts, not building a case against you. The decline, when it comes, is a judgement made on those facts — which is exactly why the accuracy of the facts is the first thing to examine.

What the report contains — and what it leaves out

A typical report covers the conditions the underwriter asked about, the dates and reasons for related consultations, your current and recent medication, any specialist referrals and their outcomes, relevant test results, and a note on your current health. It is a clinical summary answering questions, not a narrative of everything that has ever happened to you.

Because it is built from your GP's records, its usefulness depends on those records being right. Records can contain a miscoded entry, an out-of-date medication, a condition that was queried and then ruled out but never clearly resolved on the file, or a note that reads more alarmingly out of context than it did at the time. Any of those can tip a finely balanced decision. That is the first place to look after a decline, and you have a legal right to look there before the report is even sent.

Your rights under the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988

The Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 gives you real control over a report written for insurance purposes by a doctor responsible for your care. If you say so at the point of giving consent, you are entitled to see the report before it goes to the insurer.

Once you have asked to see it, your GP should not send the report until you have had access to it, or until twenty-one days have passed. In that window you can read it, and if you believe something in it is incorrect or misleading you can ask the doctor to amend it. If the doctor declines to change something, you can ask them to attach a written statement of your view, or you can withdraw your consent to the report being sent at all — though withholding it will usually stop the application in its tracks, so it is a step to weigh carefully. There are limited grounds on which a doctor may hold back part of a report, such as where disclosure could cause you serious harm or would reveal information about another person, but these are narrow.

Source: Access to Medical Reports Act 1988, published at legislation.gov.uk under the Open Government Licence.

Decline, postponement, or special terms — which did you get?

Before deciding what to do, be sure what actually happened, because the word "no" hides three quite different outcomes.

A decline is an insurer saying it will not offer cover on this application. A postponement is an insurer saying not now — usually because it wants to see a period of stability, more time since treatment, or the outcome of an investigation — and it normally tells you what it is waiting for. A postponement is not a decline, and reapplying after the stated period with updated evidence is often successful. There are also special terms: an offer, but at a higher price or with an exclusion. Read the letter closely, and if it is not clear, ask the insurer or broker to spell out which of the three you received and on what evidence. A decline you can identify and understand is one you can act on; you will also need to know exactly what it was, because future application forms ask about it, as we explain in answering the "have you ever been declined?" question honestly.

The three moves left after a decline

Once a genuine decline has landed, three practical moves remain, and they are worth taking in order.

One: get the reason and check it. Ask the insurer or broker what information the decision relied on. You are entitled to understand it, and understanding it lets you test whether it was accurate. If the decision rested on something wrong in your record, that is fixable at source, and fixing it changes the facts the next underwriter will see.

Two: separate a decline from a postponement, and act accordingly. If it was really a postponement, diarise the date and gather the evidence the insurer said it wanted — a consultant's letter, a clear test result, a documented period of stability. If it was a firm decline, treat it as one insurer's appetite, not the market's verdict.

Three: take the case to someone who places difficult risks. A broker who specialises in medical and impaired-life cases knows which insurers have appetite for which conditions, can often sound out an underwriter before a formal application, and can help present your medical evidence properly. At the same time, check any cover you already hold through work: an employer death-in-service scheme usually covers members up to a set limit without individual medical underwriting, which can make it the most valuable cover available to someone who has been turned down individually. If your decline was tied to weight in particular, the specialist, employer and guaranteed-acceptance routes are mapped out in the routes left above the mainstream BMI ceilings, and if you simply want to add to cover you already have, some routes avoid fresh medical questions entirely, as covered in raising your cover without new health questions.

Checking your own record for errors

You do not have to wait for an insurer to look at your record. You can read your own GP record yourself — many practices offer online access through the NHS App, and you can make a formal request for your records under UK data protection law. If you find a factual error, such as a wrong diagnosis code or a medication you were never on, you can ask the practice to correct it.

It is worth being realistic about what can be changed. A practice will correct a plain factual mistake, but it will not delete a clinical opinion simply because you disagree with it; in that case it can record your disagreement alongside the entry. If you hit difficulty exercising these rights, the Information Commissioner's Office explains how the right to rectification works. Correcting a genuine error before you apply again is one of the few things fully within your control.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 applies in England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own equivalent, the Access to Personal Files and Medical Reports (Northern Ireland) Order 1991, which gives broadly the same rights to see and comment on an insurance medical report from a doctor responsible for your care. So wherever you live in the UK, you have a route to see a report before it is sent and to challenge anything inaccurate in it.

The rest of the picture is the same across the UK. Underwriting appetite, the decline-versus-postponement distinction, specialist brokers and employer schemes all work the same way in Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff or Leeds. When you are ready to try again, you can get life insurance quotes and let an FCA-authorised broker take the medical history into account from the start, and our guide to getting cover with a history or a condition puts the whole process in context.

A worked example

Say an application declared "asthma, well controlled" and the underwriter requested a GP report to confirm severity. The report that came back showed two urgent same-day appointments for a chest infection two years earlier, coded in a way that made them look, at a glance, like exacerbations of the asthma itself rather than a separate respiratory infection. On that reading, the underwriter saw a pattern of poorly controlled asthma and declined. The applicant, on checking their own record, found the coding was simply wrong: both episodes were a chest infection unrelated to their asthma, confirmed by the original consultation notes, and the practice corrected the code once the discrepancy was pointed out.

That correction did not automatically overturn the decline — the first insurer's decision stood on the file it saw at the time — but it meant the applicant could go to a broker with accurate evidence and a clear explanation, rather than trying to argue around a record that looked, on paper, exactly like what the underwriter had assumed. The lesson is not that every decline hides an error; most reports are accurate and most declines are a fair reading of a genuine risk. It is that checking is cheap, quick and sometimes decisive, and it should always happen before a second application, not after another decline.

Frequently asked questions

What is in a GP report?

It answers the underwriter's specific questions rather than sending your full record. Typically it covers the conditions asked about, dates of consultations, medication, referrals, test results and your current health. Your GP completes it with your written consent, and the insurer normally pays the fee.

Can I see the report before it is sent?

Yes. Under the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 you can ask to see a report from a doctor responsible for your care before it goes to the insurer. You must say so when giving consent, and you then have twenty-one days to arrange access to it.

What can I do after a decline?

Ask what information the decision relied on and check it is accurate; factual errors in a record can be raised with the practice. Establish whether it was a decline or a postponement. Then approach a broker who places medical cases, and check any employer death-in-service cover.