Hi everybody, I am back with a chat about GP reports and the way they are used to support protection insurance applications. Insurers do try their best to avoid GP reports wherever possible, they are costly, delay the start of policies and the ability to offer terms after the report are actually quite low. They also don’t want to put extra pressure on the NHS.

This means that insurers only go for GP reports when they absolutely need to see clear records of something on a person’s medical history. If someone has their full medical records, or specific specialist letters, insurers will try to use these to underwrite an application and get the cover in place as soon as possible.

The key takeaways:

• The pros and cons of paper vs electronic GP reports
• GP reports can have an errors in them and it’s essential that these are corrected not just for the insurance application, but for their own health data
• Splitting insurance over multiple policies instead of one, can mean that GP reports aren’t needed

Next time I will be going through different life milestones and how they can trigger conversations about protection insurance.

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors PlannerX.

00:12

Hi everybody! I am back with season 12, episode seven, and today I will be focusing upon GP reports and how they’re used to help protection insurance applications, and I’m sure some of us have experienced as well how they might also cause a little bit of a hiccup or a barrier to the process too. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. Now, before I start, I’m going to go into things. I’m pretty sure I am starting with the dreaded first cold of the season, so I might suddenly need to take a little sip of water or something, just as we’re going along, that hopefully no coughing fits. So GP reports, they are triggered for a number of different reasons when it comes to protection insurance. So on this, we’re focusing on the life insurance, critical illness cover, and income protection, and it is usually due to a medical condition that the insurer needs to know a bit more about, just sort of like have that confirmation in writing from a medical professional as to that person’s medical history, and it can also be triggered sheerly by the size of the case that’s being applied for. When you start going into, if we’re talking about the life insurance, when we start talking into going to like over a million, depending upon someone’s age, you know we might be starting to have that trigger. It might even be much lower than a million pound that it triggers, depending upon a person’s age. So, the older somebody is, the more likely it is, and the lower the summer short is that triggers that. So, when when are they needed? Generally, it is as I say when there is something in the medical history. Now, that could be the condition itself, or it might even be the time frame since the diagnosis. So, there’s some things where if it was over five years ago, or even if it’s the last few years, the insurers might go, “Do you know what? We don’t need to see a GP report. We trust you that you’re telling us all the information that we need to know. But say, like, if something happened maybe six months ago, it might be that same condition. Actually, they say, you know what? It was so recent. We just want to see what’s going on, see how you’re reacting to treatment, or how well you’ve recovered. Things like that. You tend to find with protection insurance applications. Most of you will be familiar. You have different timeframes on the question set. So you have your have you ever questions, and then there’s often the have you in the last five years. There’s sometimes in the last two or three years, and then sometimes in the last six months or three months. It depends upon the insurer. Depends upon what you’re applying for. Now, if you say yes to one of the have you ever?s It’s very, very likely that is going to trigger the GP report because the very nature that they’re asking you, “Have you ever experienced this? means that it’s something that the data has shown them in the past is something that places at higher risk of somebody making a claim. So, in the “Have you ever’s, we would usually see like things like cancers, heart attacks, stroke-that’s the kind of thing where they are going to say, no matter what, we want to see something from the medical professional about that. You can also have mental health sits in there as well, and you can, you know, at times have things like tests and queries over HIV and some of the hepatitises that you can be diagnosed with. So if it’s from the Have You Evers, very very likely we’re going to need a GP report. Now what I would say is that I’m going to caveat that a little bit. So they will want to see something usually from the medical professional, but if the person still has the specialist letters relating to their diagnosis, the treatment, the follow-up, anything like that, there are times that the insurers will accept that from you or from the client direct.

04:11

I say from you because I’m assuming it’s an advisor listening, and that can avoid the need to go for GP report, which can work out much better in the long run, but what I would say is just be very mindful about asking about that because some people will keep every single record known to man. Brilliant helps in this situation. Some people don’t. You know what they’ve been through is something that they really, really do not want to be referring back to, and they might. It might be something they have the letters, but they say, “Look, I just I can’t I can’t look at it myself. Just I just want them to go to the GP. I can’t deal with it. I can’t go back to that space. And then there’s other people who will have just gotten rid of all those reports, so it’ll just be that it’s you will have to go to the GP. We sometimes as well have the in the last five. So, things like fatty liver disease that can often can need a GP report. Not always, but can do. You often get things like numbness and tingling, potentially migraines. You know the numbness and the tingling. You know, again, depending on that time frame, it could well be that they would want to go for a report. It depends upon how much information you have. Depends upon what was the cause of it, and then the migraines. Again, sometimes migraines not necessarily a concern, but it can also be something where the good, you know, what we want to just double check that everything’s been checked out with the brain, and you know, obviously all the tests and investigations done that they would ideally want to have happened. Going slightly away from the the GP reports is things like outstanding appointments. The significant majority of the time, if there is an outstanding medical appointment, the insurers are going to postpone. There’s not there’s really not much way around it for a lot of situations. There are. It’s always worth asking and finding out, and then maybe I do like to have a spreadsheet. I’d say have a little spreadsheet that says, right, if this is the type of outstanding appointment, then you know we’re going to be able to do something or we’re not. So a really good one for that is that the majority of insurers, like if there’s outstanding referrals for ADHD, will postpone the application, and the reason for that, and obviously I hope not to cause any concern, but I’m just trying to give the underwriting background to it, is that they want to make sure that there’s not something else going on in the brain or in other situations that can that can cause the same kind of behaviors that would be displayed in ADHD. So they’re just trying to rule everything out. Another one here that’s really common is outstanding appointments for tinnitus referrals. Now, and this can be really tricky because of the fact I’ve had this a few times where people like, but why? You know, why can’t why the postponing just is just ringing in my ears? Now in terms of the underwriting, they’re going to want to make sure that there isn’t anything what’s like what’s known as an acoustic neuroma or other tumor in the brain that is causing that ringing. You know the potential dizziness that comes with tinnitus as well. So there are reasons behind some of these decisions, even if it seems really, really silly sometimes to ourselves or to the client, I mean, sometimes there are things we’re like, oh, just seriously, come on, it’s absolutely fine. But there is usually some kind of reason, whether or not we agree with it or not. You know, it’s it’s what is there. And what I would say though is, in terms of outstanding appointments, is the exceptions to say like you know if you’ve got a routine blood test coming up for checking thyroid levels for say like diabetes routine things like mammograms things like that they often won’t lead to a postponement. If it was a case of these person that the people in those situations had had their routine tests and something was a little bit out of the usual ranges and they’re having repeats, that would be something that would lead to a postpone until the repeats are done.

08:06

But just your general kind of yeah, I just go like oh again high blood pressure is another one yeah I just go once a year and then check it over and it’s just it’s coming up soon. It might well be that the system says well how long ago is it this was taken? Well, do you know what? It was taken 11 months ago. We know you’re going to take another one next month. Let’s just see what that one says. It might do that. It it might not. So it is just a case of seeing. But outstanding appointments, immediate. That should be, especially as an advisor, for you to be thinking. I think this will likely postpone. Do I potentially have options otherwise? Don’t assume. Don’t just go. Oh well, I definitely can’t do anything unless you do very particularly work in this space of health conditions and know for fact because the last thing you want to do is potentially delay it and then say if something happens to the person in that meantime and you could have done something, and now you can’t because of X, Y, Z. It just all gets a bit messy. You know, we can potentially go into complaints areas and things like that, which we don’t want to do. So, but that is a big issue because, as well, when I say we’re moving a little bit away from GPU pots, we’re not in some ways because a lot of people will have outstanding appointments in their record and not even know it, and that can really cause an issue because everything can be going absolutely swimmingly fine with the application, and all of a sudden this pops up. Your client’s not aware of it; they have no idea what’s going on. And sometimes it can just be that they’ve maybe had something in the past. Maybe they’ve had a few, like a little something happen in terms of palpitations or something else, where they had some investigations, and there’s maybe just a throwaway note from a GP. That I say throwaway note. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful for a GP. It’s just that we we see notes at different times in reports, and you know we all can write things down as. As a human versus sort of like what we would be saying very specifically is an absolute requirement, and it might just say something like you know check in in a year with a question mark or something, and that in itself would be like oh well you were meant to check in with a year and it’s and the person might not even know about it. It might just be that the GP has thought you know what this should probably be something that we we maybe have a look at, but it’s maybe not an actual set in stone procedure. So that’s to be mindful of. So that can obviously come up in GP reports, which is a pain. We then have alcohol. Alcohol has been causing no end of issues for a number of different reasons, and I have mentioned this before, but just to summarize it here, used to be guidance was 21 units for alcohol per week. The BMA, British Associate Medical Association, changed it to 14 units per week. There was no kind of really high alert message going out to everybody to say it’s now 14 units, and we are finding that obviously, as people go to the GP now, it might be just that they’ve reached an age where they get their routine checks, and they’re saying, “Well, how much do you drink? Well, I drink 18 units a week. Oh, well, you need to reduce to 14 units. That immediately goes down in the insurers’ applications as you’ve been advised to reduce your alcohol consumption because you’re drinking over guidelines. It’s still less than what the BMA used to say a couple of years ago, and what insurers were absolutely fine with a couple of years ago being like near 21 units, and insurers wouldn’t even mind 21 units as long as you’ve been told not to reduce your consumption. Now you might think, oh well, how often is this coming up? Well, the other thing is that a lot of the time, when people switch GP surgeries, they have to do like a, in a sense, an onboarding questionnaire to the surgery.

11:48

And again, if they were to say that they drank over 14 units, there will usually be something in there to say they’ve been advised to reduce down to 14 units. And again, that means we have to do advice to reduce. It is proving a real issue when it comes to going ahead for insurance. And what’s really important, I just spoke to somebody actually about something of this very, very situation that they’re experiencing at the moment with their insurance applications and their records. But it wasn’t to do with alcohol; it was in a different situation completely where there was errors in their records, but select with this, like with alcohol, so something like this. But somebody, let’s say, doesn’t use an advisor; they maybe do it for themselves, or maybe they use an advisor, but they don’t know. It’s not been specifically said to them. Well, BMA guidance is now 14 units, and it’s kind of like just gone into an automated tick box system in their records. Now, the issue we have here is that it might say on their records advised to advise that 14 units is what they should be aiming for, not what they’re having now, as like a computer says situation. Well, if this person puts insurance in place and they have no knowledge that that’s kind of like being there, we’re not all studying our medical records all the time and making sure that they’re accurate. And in any case, you know they haven’t actually been told by the GP. It’s just kind of hidden in the record somewhere. Well, if there’s a claim in 30 years’ time, how are the family going to be able to prove that there wasn’t some kind of deliberate non-disclosure there, or even sort of like a not a full-on deliberate within we’re going to void the policy, but more sort of a well you should have chose and you should have known kind of situation. So we’re not going to pay out the full amount, or you’re going to need to pay X Y Z to access the full amount. I’ve discussed the technicalities of that in other places, so I won’t go into too in depth with that. But it’s going to cause a real issue, and you know it is something that hasn’t been solved yet. There are significant errors in medical records. I will start chatting through some of them as an example. So you know somebody I was speaking to early today, their situation is is that somebody else’s prescription has been put in their medical records for quite a long period of time, and it’s got nothing to do with them. So not only, and I think the really key thing here as well is that this isn’t just about insurance applications. You know, if some if that’s happening, then what about that person’s actual health? Because if they were to go somewhere in hospital, and maybe let’s say they’re unconscious and they’re like, “Oh, well, they’re taking these meds. We better get them for them and give them to them. Well, what’s if they’ve never taken that medication before? It’s completely wrong for them to to be given that. It would be you know very very bad if that were to happen, and so it’s really important that the records are obviously as accurate as possible, and that that is outside of our remit as the advisors and as side as insurers, but what I would say is that if you are helping a client and you know the GP report is wrong, then it’s really important to be able to give them guidance on how to get that corrected, not just for insurance but just for their general health as well. But let’s have a look at some of the errors that we would. Have experienced, so so one stands out for me is say the alcohol. So I helped somebody not long ago where there were declined insurance after the GP report because of the fact that the GP had written down that they drinked five five drinks alcoholic drinks a day, and the person was absolutely flabbergasted, mortified, everything else, because it was five drinks a year. They only ever drank on special occasions. Now I know that a lot of people would probably say, “Well, how do you know? Well, five drinks a day.

15:36

So when I’m talking units, so the units are going to be more than that. So that is going into quite high alcohol unit consumption per week. We would very likely be seeing something going on somewhere in the bloods when we were looking at the blood tests, especially potentially with the liver. I’m not saying it definitely would, but we would probably be seeing something going on in terms of blood sugar, in terms of the liver function tests, in terms of the kidneys, something would probably be going on if someone was drinking that much, and also probably something about their ability to just do sort of like maintain like the ability to work things like that. I’m sure there are people who can do. I’m just saying that in general, we would usually expect something, and for this person, there was literally nothing else, nothing else at all. Well, there was something that led to obviously the GP report, but nothing that would sort of be to that kind of a regard. And so, obviously, the records had to be corrected, and they were, and we were able to get things sorted. But one that always really stands out in my mind, and I have mentioned this on the podcast before, because I think it’s so important. So we had somebody come to us, and it was quite a few years ago now. It was a woman who had had breast cancer, and obviously we worked very, very much in this space. She’d been declined, but by every insurer she’d approached. And when she came to us, we had somebody that were like, “Right, we’re going to go there, and this is the price it’s going to be. You know, it should be, and it came back, and the price was higher than what we’d expected, and because of our experience at Cura and what we do, we said, well, do you know what? That price-it’s more as if your breast cancer had been a higher staging, a higher grading, and the staging and the grading is what determines the severity of the cancer that someone has been diagnosed with, and we were just like, you know what? Can we, can you get a copy of your GP records? And they did, and and the GP report that was sent to the insurer. And what we established was that the doctor that was completing the form had been writing the incorrect staging and grading on the records, the report to the insurers, and that’s why she’d been declined everywhere. And obviously, we were able to step in and go, “What? No, that’s not okay. That needs to be corrected. We were able to get the specialist letters, obviously from the oncologist, which did prove the exact thing, rather than it being something written out by the GP, and we were able obviously to get the price reduced down to what it should be. But unfortunately, that person then had experienced so many declines and had to spend so long trying to get the insurance that it, you know, it was just. I mean, this was obviously a human error on the doctor’s part, but that is something that can happen. Obviously, we stepped in and got it corrected, and all was okay in the end. But not everybody has access to an advisor or chooses to go down the advisory route, and there will be other people in this situation. We’ve also seen it. I’ve certainly seen it with people where there’s been a GP report, and then very specifically saw this GP report where it was one of the new electronic ones and there was one line in the entire thing and these the electronic ones are pretty hefty files that basically just said the word diabetes. There was no other blood tests. There was nothing, no nothing anywhere else in that report that had any kind of connection to diabetes, no medications, no follow-ups, no blood test results that showed diabetes, and the insurer was putting the price up. And obviously, I got in touch with the insurer, and I was just like, “Why are you putting the price up? And they’re like, “Well, she’s diabetic. She’s clearly not diabetic because there was literally nothing else in here. It’s an error in the report.

19:18

Well, you know, and it was it was very clear, and I appreciate that the insurers, the underwriters, have to go by what’s in front of them, and you know they can’t. You know there’s there’s lots of things in the background between the insurers and the reinsurers as to what they can and can’t do either which way. Now with that one, obviously we were able to get a report from the GP that said, yeah, there’s definitely an error here. We’ve removed it. This person definitely does not have diabetes. We’ve not checked. Well, we’ve not seen that anywhere at all. But still, it delayed the process, you know. And without having that knowledge to be able to challenge it, that she could have been paying a higher premium. We have something as well. Where you know drugs can be quite a big issue. So there’s a situation I’m aware of at the moment where there was somebody who had gone to hospital with some anxiety and heart palpitations, and they’d been asked by the person as a routine question, “Have you have taken any drugs such as this and this cocaine, anything like that? And the person said no, and in the A and E, they’ve put having on the report. It basically says having anxiety and heart palpitations, cocaine with a question mark. Now that person has said no. That doctor has made an assumption that there’s potentially cocaine. There was nothing in terms of showing drugs and blood tests or anything like that. So that means, in terms of the timeframes and everything, that the insurers are saying, “Well, we’re not going to cover because we think they’ve possibly taken cocaine, and they’re not telling us. That’s a really, really awful situation to be in. How can that person prove that they didn’t take cocaine, and then also as well, how many other people go to hospital with heart palpitations due to a panic attack, and are maybe having something similar put on their records, and they are none the wiser, and going forward for the insurances, which would then lead to what is known obviously as a potential non-disclosure. Another key area that we have in terms of issues would be kidney disease. I have covered kidney disease before, so please do feel free to go back to that. But essentially, the kidney disease reading. So you’ve got things like chronic kidney disease, and that is when your kidney function reduces to certain levels, and there’s different stages. Obviously, so kidney kidney disease stage one is sorry the first stage kidney disease stage four would be very very serious and you know you’re probably looking at needing some quite specific intervention and support. Now the annoying really annoying thing is, it’s a bit like the BMI arguments as well. In terms of the the computer says one thing and it’s been done years ago and it needs updating. So basically, when you look at whether or not someone has kidney disease or not, it’s all based upon essentially what is the effective kidney function reading for, I believe white men in their 20s, and that’s what it’s based on: European men of age. And it doesn’t take into account different ethnicities. It doesn’t take into account that very naturally, somebody in their 70s, their kidney won’t be functioning at the same level as that of someone in their 20s. Now, that isn’t to say that the insurers shouldn’t take that into mind, but when you are looking at well, what’s this person’s health? And you know, obviously, if we’re if we’re looking at statistics, well, this person passing away at this age because they’re 70, then all of that data and everything is based upon the fact that somebody in their 70s doesn’t have the same kidney function as a 20-year-old because that’s just inherently what’s going to happen as the body ages. So it’s quite common with people who are older, I would say, in their 60s and over, for the medical records to just, and again, a kind of computer says situation, say, oh well, the kidneys at this point, so they’ve got chronic kidney disease stage something. Now, as soon as we start seeing that, the insurers go well. They’ve got chronic kidney disease, so we potentially need to price up, or we potentially need to decline cover.

23:30

It’s really, really important to be on top of that because it might be that that isn’t the case at all. That it is just the natural way of the kidneys have gone, and you know, in terms of if it was kidney disease where there would be a concern, or there be it should be maybe a concern that the insurer will be aware of, then there would be some kind of intervention happening with the GP, whether or not it’s more regular checks of the kidney, whether or not it’s medications or different things or treatments of some sort. So if it is just a very random computer-generated kind of like assessment of the reading, then that is something that we can potentially challenge. But it might go down an automatic route in a sense in terms of what the underwriter sees. So you’ll need to be more involved as the advisor on that one. And then there’s other things as well that you know in terms of the errors or potential issues. So Alan, my co-director and husband, said that I could share this with you. So he is bradycardic which means he has a very low heart rate. We are literally the opposite sides of the scale and the spectrum of these kinds of things. So I have to take medication to lower my heart rate, whereas he’s on he’s on no medication, but basically his heartbeat is still significantly lower than mine, and it’s because of all the fitness he does. You know, he does a lot in terms of the gym. He does lots in terms of kickboxing, and he’s really really focused on fitness, which means that his heart rate. Has come down quite a lot. Now we had medicals earlier this year as part of our insurances. It’s just what we do. We do also just like to to know where we are with everything. And as always, it came back saying you’ve got a really low heart rate. You should speak to your GP. So obviously, spoke to him like, yeah, it’s fine. They also said that he had a potential block in one of his arteries, and that he should speak to his GP, which immediately, of course, we did. You know, we were straight to the GP. What’s going on? Is this you know something we need to be on top of and things like that? Now the GP has said, you know, they’ve had a look, they had a double check of things, and they’ve said that there’s no issue whatsoever with the readings that he’s been given, and that it’s just with how fit he is, and that’s the reason, and it’s causing his fitness level is causing this kind of a blip in the readings, but yet his medical records will still say he’s got an abnormal heart rhythm and a potential block. In a sense, what do you do with that? Because you’ve got somebody there who is super fit, which is what the insurers would like, but yet the standard heart checks are saying abnormal, but the GP are then saying there’s nothing we’re going to do about it because it’s fine. You’re just fit. It’s really, really not easy at all. So a couple of things that we can potentially do now. You could, let’s say, if you are applying for 500,000 pound of life insurance for your client, and it’s triggering a GP report. Well, what you could potentially do, and you do this for a number of reasons because GP reports we tend to say on average are about eight weeks to turn around. If there’s then issues in them, you then have to get them corrected. A lot of the time, this thing’s missing, so they go for further information from the client or from the GP, which resets the timer. It’s an absolute pain, and we also, I mean, some GPs turn them around really fast within a week. It is unusual, but it does happen. We have other GPs who will say to the insurer because the insurers will pay a set amount for these reports. And I think, don’t quote me on this, but I think last time I heard an an average is around about 120 pounds to the GP for completing a report.

27:17

Now we’ve also had it with GP surgeries where they’ve turned on and said, “Well, if you are going to pay us 120 pound, you can get it in six months’ time. If you want it within a month, you’ll pay us X, which the insurer is not going to do. And then ultimately, you’re in a really tricky situation there because that client is probably going to get pretty ticked off at their GP, but there’s there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, I was going to say there is there is something you can do about it. You could suggest for the client to do a data subject access request of the GP for any data they hold on them. That would work, or it should definitely come through much quicker than six months. But it is just a little bit of a an extra, and you know not everybody wants to do that. But anyway, so we could potentially split between so do two policies of 250,000 with two different insurers. Now, assuming there’s no other life insurance in place, that isn’t going to trigger the insurer to say, “What are you applying elsewhere? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Because the insurers tend to say, “Including this application, will you have more than 1.5 million pounds worth of life insurance across the market? And so, doing two different policies of 250,000 isn’t going to cause any issues. Obviously, please do check your questions specifically for whichever insurer you’re applying to, because there might be some who do have an issue. The majority of the ones that I would be looking at wouldn’t, and then the other thing as to why that’s a good idea is one because you maybe could get the cover straight away. So this is assuming that we’re more triggering a GP report due to age and the amount of insurance rather than a health condition. Because say like if somebody had had cancer in the past, then splitting it isn’t going to make any difference. You know, if you and you have you ever questions, that won’t make a difference at all. They will still want to see the GP report, but yeah. So let’s just assume that we can get it through with two policies, 250,000. Well, then we can start the policy straight away. Amazing, we don’t need to wait. The other thing as well is that with the trusts for the policy, they each have their own nil rate band up to 325,000. So by doing the two different policies, you are staying within that nil rate band rather than doing a policy that goes over it. And again, I have done other podcasts on that, so you can always go back to look at that if you need to. So that’s a good idea. The drawbacks are that well, if there is an issue in the GP report. We’re not going to know until potentially a claim is put forward, but and it might be slightly more expensive to do two individual policies rather than doing just the one. But it’s also something that you might want to consider putting forward to your client. You know, I’ve certainly. Forward to clients sometime. Go and look. If I put you and you, you lay all out. You say if I put you here, it’s going to go for GP report. It’ll take probably this long and it’ll cost this much. But if you prefer to as an alternative, we can look at this. These two insurers. We can do this. I can start it for you today, and it will be a little bit more expensive. This will be the difference. What would you like? And give them that ability to make that decision. What I will be very important to say as well, though, is that if you were thinking of splitting the policies down due to financial underwriting, which is different to medical underwriting, so that is where we’re talking, you know, high summer shorts, where we are starting to trigger the GP reports purely because of the amount of insurance being taken out, then that is unlikely to work because you’re probably going to start going over that thing where the insurers are saying how much you’re taking out in the market overall.

30:57

At which point you’d be careful if you’re doing that, we’re going to start looking more at it, and so coming towards the end of the podcast, the last thing I want to talk about is the paper versus electronic reports. So we have IGPR who are working in our industry and have created the brilliant system that works with the electronic records from the GP. So basically, they have a website, and if you’ve got the client’s application number and you’ve put it all forward, and you’re told by the insurer, yes, it’s going to be an electronic one based upon what we know from the GP. The IGPR system will give you updates. Like if you go on, they’ll say, right, it’s with the GP now. Right, it’s now being paid. Okay, based upon this GP surgery and their turnaround times, we expect it to be back with the insurer on this date, and then it’s now with the insurer. So it saves you a lot of time in terms of doing those constant checks with the insurer. Whereabouts is it? Or having to speak with the GP. You know, it’s like, where is it? Kind of thing. It’s all there in that system, which is incredibly useful for for everybody involved. The insurer, for us, for the client. We all know where we stand with it now. What I would say is it’s a brilliant system, but there are a couple of caveats that I would strongly suggest that you speak to your clients about. And the thing is, is that so with the electronic reports that go through the IGPR system, the when it goes to the client, there’s usually like two buttons. The last time I looked at it was two buttons. It might not be that way anymore, but last time it was. And one of them says, “Save my report, and one of them says, “Yeah, good to go. Send it to the insurer. What I say to people is that save it before you press go to the insurer. And the reason being is, is that once you click “Go to the insurer, that report goes to the insurer. It’s then there’s not a copy in the GP systems. The client doesn’t have a copy. It’s all with the insurer, which is fine. But obviously, if there’s something in there that we’re not expecting, if there’s suddenly a higher price increase, or if there’s suddenly a postponement or a decline, we don’t have the information. We can’t then ask the GP for the report because they they literally don’t have it. It has gone from their system. So ask the client to save it as a just in case, because then you can potentially see the report, or at least say to the insurer, look, they have a copy of the report, or the client’s given me permission, and you have to have certain things to obviously show that you’ve got permission from the client for them to tell you more clearly as to what is going on. Insurers are usually able to say to the clients what has caused it, but I have to say that we’re still having the issue that is often not usually clear. So let’s say somebody has gone forward; we put them forward because they do have a heart condition. Let’s say maybe it’s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and the insurer has turned around and said, “We’re declining. The decline letters can’t come back. We’re declining because of your heart condition. And then everyone goes, “Well, thank you. That’s really useful. We know that because clearly that is what you’ve looked at, but we don’t know why. What is it about this? Because is it that there’s an error? Is it that there’s an outstanding appointment in two weeks that we just need to wait for, you just don’t know. So we really, really want the client to see it and save it. There is still obviously GPs that use the paper ones. I again do advocate that you say for the client to see the paper one first. I know it can slow things down by a day or two, but again, if there are errors in that report, at least hopefully the client spots it before it goes to the the insurer, so they can say to the GP then and there, you need to correct this. This is wrong before it goes anywhere.

34:28

But even if they go to the GP surgery, even if the surgery won’t necessarily print out the amount a copy, say to them, take a picture with your phone of every page. Make sure we can see the edges, and it’s very very clear that we’ve got all of the pages as well, because then again, if there’s any issues, we can say, well, we’ve got a copy of it, we can see it in front of us, and then it’ll make it easier if somebody does postpone or decline, and it is something that you can then put elsewhere. Well, then we’re not retriggering the starting point of the GP report. We can then just transfer it and send. It to the new insurer with everything that we have. Hopefully, that’s been helpful, giving you some insights as to what we’re seeing. You know, GP reports. A lot of the time, I really do like a GP report being done. I know a lot of people prefer them not to be done. I like them to be done on the basis of everything I’ve said today. The amount of errors that we see, I am very concerned, and I have said this out in the industry before that there is going to be lots of claims for non-disclosures and other things when we’re starting to see claims, and maybe I would say the next 1020, years when it’s been moved much more towards electronic records, and we’re getting a lot more of these computer errors that we are not able to go back and debate 20 years later. So I do like them because then at least we all know well the insurer has seen what that GP record is saying, and going from there. Now, I know some people probably be a little bit because of the fact that now that we’ve seen GP records, they are much much bigger. It is taking underwriters much longer to look through them. But what I will put forward is that we are starting to see insurers are developing AI systems that are able to kind of crawl through the GP reports, get out the necessary information, help them target the areas that they need to see. So that should hopefully start speeding things up soon. But we just have to, as always, everything that’s happening, especially with data and AI and everything, we’re just all trying to adjust to it, and and we are getting there. So I would strongly suggest if there’s a GP report that you make sure the client gets a copy, that you prepare them beforehand. That sometimes things are in them that they wouldn’t necessarily expect, and that if that’s the case, that’s fine. It’s just something that’ll end up getting corrected. So thank you for listening, everybody. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Next time, I’m going to be back and talking about those life milestones that happen that trigger the protection insurance conversation. I know that that’s a really key area with a lot of advisors, especially if they work in a specific area like mortgages or pensions. You know, and they’re sorry, sticking one area just like I stick in protection insurance. That’s my thing. I don’t do the others, but it’s quite tricky when you’re in another area to know. Well, when do I bring this in, and why would I be using this as a as like a an opener to this conversation, and how much do I kind of push to sort of make sure that this is something that the person takes seriously? So, as always, you can get your CPD on our website practical-protection.co.uk, and a very big thank you to PlannerX for providing the CPD for the podcast. Speak soon, everybody. Bye.

Transcript Disclaimer:

Episodes of the Practical Protection Podcast include a transcript of the episode’s audio. The text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record.

We often discuss health and medical conditions in relation to protection insurance and underwriting, always consult with a healthcare professional if you are concerned about any medical conditions and symptoms we have covered in any episode.