What insurers check about you

It starts with your consent

Every life insurance application includes an authorization. Signing it lets the insurer collect information from the sources below for the purpose of assessing your application and, later, any claim.

That consent is not unlimited and it is not indefinite, and it is genuine consent: you can decline to give it, and the insurer can decline to consider the application without it.

Handling of that information in Canada falls under federal or provincial privacy law depending on where you are, which gives you rights of access and correction described at the end of this page.

The shared industry database

Canadian and American life insurers participate in a shared information exchange, usually referred to by its initials, MIB. It exists to prevent someone from disclosing a condition to one insurer and omitting it from another.

What it holds is narrower than people imagine. It records that an application was made and stores coded summaries of findings relevant to underwriting. It is not a copy of your medical file, and an insurer cannot decline an application on a database entry alone. What an entry does is prompt questions.

The most common way this catches people out is honest rather than dishonest: someone applies, is asked about a condition they had forgotten, and answers no in good faith, and the file then shows a coded entry from an application four years earlier.

Prescription history

Insurers can access a profile of prescriptions dispensed to you, usually going back several years, including the drug, the dose and the dates.

This is often the quickest route to identifying something not on the application. A medication implies the condition it treats, and a change in dose implies something about how the condition has been going.

It also occasionally creates confusion, because medications are prescribed for more than one purpose. A drug commonly used for one condition may have been prescribed for something entirely different. Where that applies to you, saying so on the application saves a round of questions.

Your doctor’s records

For larger amounts, older applicants, or where something needs context, the insurer requests an attending physician statement from your family doctor or a specialist.

This is the most detailed source and the slowest. Practices vary in how quickly they respond, and a request sitting in a queue is the single most common reason an application takes months rather than weeks. Telling your doctor’s office that a request is coming genuinely helps.

The report covers your history, findings, treatment and follow-up. It is provided to the insurer, not to you, though you can request a copy through your own doctor.

Driving record

Where relevant, insurers can obtain your provincial driving abstract. Impaired driving convictions carry the most weight, and a pattern of serious infractions can affect both price and availability.

Medical testing they arrange

Anything from the paramedical exam: measurements, blood and urine results, and any additional testing requested.

Financial information

For larger coverage amounts, insurers may ask for evidence of income or net worth to confirm the amount applied for is reasonable. This is normal at higher amounts and absent at ordinary ones.

Public and open sources

Insurers may look at publicly available information. This is not routine trawling, and it is not nothing either. The practical point is that a claimed occupation or activity that is publicly contradicted is a discrepancy.

Your rights

Under Canadian privacy law you can ask an organization what personal information it holds about you, and ask for it to be corrected if it is wrong.

For the shared industry database, you can request your record directly and dispute an entry you believe is inaccurate. For an insurer, you can make an access request to their privacy officer. For medical records, you go to the doctor or facility that holds them.

If a decision went against you and you think the information behind it was wrong, this is worth using. Errors do happen, and a corrected record can change a subsequent application.

What this means practically

The checks are the reason accurate disclosure is not merely a moral point. Most of what you might be tempted to leave off is discoverable, and a discrepancy found later is far more damaging than the condition itself would have been.

The great majority of conditions do not prevent coverage. What creates real problems is a gap between what the application said and what the records show. That is covered in leaving something off the application.