Rejected for a Mental Health History — Ask Why

If a life insurer has rejected your life insurance application because of your mental health, you are entitled to ask why — and to be told, in plain language, what information the decision was based on. That right is not a courtesy. It comes from a set of industry commitments most people are never pointed to, and using it is the difference between accepting a flat "no" and understanding whether the "no" was even the right answer.

The first thing to hold on to is that a decline from one insurer is not a decline from the market. Insurers assess the same mental health history very differently, and the reason behind a single decision is often narrower, and more correctable, than the letter makes it look. Before you conclude that cover is closed to you, find out what the insurer actually relied on.

This page explains the explanation you can ask for, where the right comes from, how to use the answer, and — just as importantly — what these commitments deliberately leave unchanged.

The short answer: you can ask, and they should tell you

When a decision letter arrives, it often says very little. "We are unable to offer terms on this occasion" is a common form of words, and it leaves you no wiser about what tipped the assessment. That vagueness is not the end of the process. It is the point at which you write back and ask two specific things: what the reason for the decision was, and what information the insurer used to reach it.

You are asking this because the answer changes what you do next. A decline built on your own answers to the health questions is a different problem from one built on a GP report that contains an error, and a decline is a different problem again from a postponement dressed up in discouraging language. Until you know which of these you are dealing with, any next step is a guess.

Most large UK insurers have signed up to a set of commitments that are meant to make exactly this conversation possible. They do not guarantee you cover. What they do is give you standing to demand an explanation, in language you can understand, rather than a closed door.

What the ABI Mental Health and Insurance Standards commit insurers to

The Association of British Insurers publishes the Mental Health and Insurance Standards, a voluntary code that member firms and many brokers have adopted. The Standards are not a law and they cannot force an insurer to offer you a policy. What they set out is how a firm should behave when mental health is part of an application: asking questions that are relevant rather than intrusive, training staff to handle disclosures sensitively, communicating clearly, and — the part that matters here — explaining decisions and signposting you to alternatives.

In practice that means a signatory firm should be able to tell you, if you ask, the reason it declined and the source of the information behind it: your own declaration, a report from your GP, or both. It should say so in plain terms, not in jargon, and it should point you towards other options rather than leaving you at a dead end. You can read the Standards yourself on the Association of British Insurers site.

Two caveats keep this honest. The Standards are voluntary, so a firm that has not signed up is not bound by them, though the largest life insurers generally have. And "explaining the decision" is not the same as "changing the decision". The value of the explanation is that it tells you where to push next — not that it obliges anyone to reverse course.

How to ask, and what to ask for

Put the request in writing, by email or letter, so you have a record and a date. Keep it short and specific. You are asking for four things:

• The reason for the decision, in plain language.
• Whether the outcome is a decline or a postponement, and if a postponement, the period before they will look again.
• What information the decision relied on — your application answers, a GP report, a nurse screening, or something else.
• If a medical report was used, a copy of it, or confirmation of what it said.

That last point has its own machinery. If the insurer asked your doctor for a report, you have a statutory right to see it. Under the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 you can ask to see a report prepared by your own GP or specialist before it is sent to the insurer, and for a period afterwards, and to request corrections of anything you believe is factually wrong. Separately, under data protection law you can make a subject access request to the insurer for the personal data it holds about you, and complain to the Information Commissioner's Office if it is not provided. These are the levers that turn "we relied on medical information" into a document you can actually read.

Decline or postponement — not the same word

This distinction is easy to miss and expensive to ignore. A decline means the insurer will not offer cover on this risk as it stands. A postponement means it will not offer cover yet, usually because something is unsettled — a recent change in medication, a recent hospital admission, a period of instability that it wants to see move further into the past, or an open referral it wants the outcome of.

The reason it matters is that the two point in opposite directions. A postponement is a "come back later", and it often carries a rough timescale: many mental health postponements turn on how long you have been stable, so the same application can succeed after a documented interval that it failed at today. A decline is a firmer answer from that insurer, but it says nothing about the next insurer's appetite. If the letter is ambiguous, the single most useful question you can ask is which of the two it actually is.

It is also worth separating a decline from an offer that comes with conditions attached. Some applicants are not turned down but offered cover with a mental health exclusion written into the policy, which removes far less than people fear. If that is what you have been offered, the question is not "should I refuse it" but "what does the exclusion actually take out" — which is a different article's job.

Is the decision even lawful? The Equality Act exception

People often assume that declining someone over a mental health condition must be discrimination, and therefore unlawful. It is more complicated than that, and understanding why helps you aim your challenge correctly.

The Equality Act 2010 treats many mental health conditions as disabilities, and it does prohibit disability discrimination. But it contains a specific exception for insurance. An insurer is permitted to treat a disabled person less favourably where it is doing so by reference to information that is relevant to the risk, from a source on which it is reasonable to rely, and where it is reasonable to rely on that information. In other words, the law does not forbid an insurer from taking your mental health into account. It forbids an insurer from doing so on a whim, on prejudice, or on evidence it had no good reason to trust. You can read the Act on legislation.gov.uk.

That is precisely why the right to know the evidence is the useful right. If a decision rests on relevant, reliable, up-to-date information, the exception protects it. If it rests on something out of date, mistaken, or irrelevant to mortality risk, you have a real basis to ask for it to be looked at again. The same reasoning applies to physical conditions too — it is the logic behind why, for instance, a diagnosis such as multiple sclerosis affects the cover you want less than you might fear: the insurer must reason from the evidence, not from the label.

When the evidence is wrong: checking and correcting the record

Underwriting decisions are only as good as the information under them, and that information is not always right. A GP report can carry a historic entry that reads more alarmingly out of context than it did at the time. A one-off note from a difficult period years ago can sit in your records looking like a current risk. An episode you have long since recovered from can be recorded without the recovery being recorded alongside it.

Once you have seen what was used, read it for three things: is it accurate, is it current, and is it complete. If an entry is simply wrong, you can ask your GP to correct a factual error. If it is accurate but stale, you can supply what has happened since — a letter from your consultant, evidence of a long stable period, confirmation that you are no longer on a particular medication. Insurers reconsider on new evidence more readily than people expect, because the evidence is the thing the Equality Act exception makes them answer for. This is the same principle that decides whether a claim could be refused over what is on your record: what matters is whether the information relied on was accurate and reasonable, not merely that it exists.

What to do with the answer — and what the Standards do not change

Suppose the explanation comes back and the decision stands on sound, current information. That is not the end either, because a decline is one insurer's view of one risk on one day. Three routes are worth taking in order.

First, use a broker who places harder-to-insure cases. A specialist knows which insurers have appetite for which histories and can often sound out an underwriter informally before a formal application is made, which spares your record another logged decline. No broker can promise acceptance, and you should be wary of anyone who does — but the right one materially improves the odds. If you want to start there, you can get life insurance quotes through an FCA-authorised broker and have your history looked at properly rather than run through an automated filter.

Second, check what you may already hold. Many employers provide death-in-service cover through a group scheme, which typically pays a multiple of salary and — crucially — is arranged without individual medical underwriting up to a set limit. If you have been declined individually, group cover you already have can quietly be doing the job you were trying to buy.

Third, keep the Ombudsman in view but keep it in proportion. If you believe you were treated unfairly — a decision reached on the wrong facts, or a process that fell short — you can complain to the firm and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service. What the Ombudsman will not do is order an insurer to cover a risk it has properly assessed and declined; underwriting judgement is the insurer's to make. It looks at fairness and process, not commercial appetite. That is the honest limit of what any of this achieves: the Standards, the law and the Ombudsman together give you a right to a fair, evidence-based decision explained clearly — not a right to a yes. For emotional support through what can be a bruising process, Mind publishes guidance on mental health and insurance and runs an information line.

It is fair to ask why mental health features in the assessment at all. The blunt reason is mortality: suicide is one of the causes of death registered every year in the UK, and among some working-age groups it is a significant one, which is why insurers treat certain histories as relevant to risk rather than ignoring them. Recognising that the concern is real is not the same as accepting that every decline is correct — it is the reason the evidence behind the decline is worth scrutinising.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR), 2024, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The industry Standards and the Financial Ombudsman Service apply across the whole UK, so the right to an explanation and a complaint route travel with you wherever you live. Two of the underlying laws differ.

The right to see a doctor's report before it goes to the insurer comes from the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 in England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland the equivalent is the Access to Personal Files and Medical Reports (Northern Ireland) Order 1991, which does a similar job under a different name. The Equality Act 2010, which contains the insurance exception described above, applies in England, Wales and Scotland but not in Northern Ireland, where disability discrimination is governed by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The practical position is much the same in each nation — an insurer must reason from relevant, reliable evidence — but if you are challenging a decision it is worth citing the right statute for where you live. You can see how the wider topic fits together in our guide to getting cover with a history, a condition or a job, and if you have confused life underwriting with a different product entirely, it is worth reading why life cover has no moratorium — that is private medical insurance you are thinking of.

Frequently asked questions

Can I ask why a life insurer declined me?

Yes. Under the ABI Mental Health and Insurance Standards, member firms commit to explaining decisions in plain language and telling you what information they relied on. Ask in writing for the reason and the source, including whether the decision came from your own answers, a GP report, or both. Keep a dated record of the request and the reply.

Is a decline for mental health lawful?

It can be. The Equality Act 2010 contains an insurance exception allowing disability to be taken into account where the insurer relies on information relevant to the risk, from a source it is reasonable to rely on, and where it is reasonable for it to do so. That is exactly why the evidence behind the decision is worth seeing: a decision built on out-of-date or mistaken information is open to challenge.

What can I do after a decline?

Check the facts the insurer used and correct anything wrong. Ask whether the outcome was a decline or a postponement, since they are different. Then approach a broker who places harder cases, and look at cover needing no individual underwriting, such as an employer death-in-service scheme. If you were treated unfairly, you can complain to the firm and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service.