Life Insurance for Mortgage

[martyng]

When we bought our house a couple of months ago, with a French mortgage, we were guided/steered/pushed towards an accompanying life insurance policy with the added hassle of extensive medical questionnaires etc (and how do you explain that taking statins regularly is not the same as regular medical treatment - but that could be for another thread!).  As we are just coming up to retirement, the insurance company were concerned that the mortgage term would go well into our 80s (even though we are going to pay off the mortgage when we sell up in UK).  My query concerns the need for this ?compulsory insurance policy.  Is it a legal requirement?  My UK Financial Adviser recommends cancelling this insurance - it will certainly be quite a substantial annual commitment.  Any thoughts from the forum? 

[allanb]

As far as I know this isn't a statutory requirement, but you are normally bound by any contract you have signed.  Apparently you have  two: one with a lender and another with an insurer.

Anyone who lends you money can make it a condition that you carry insurance to protect him in the event of your death.  (If a borrower doesn't like the condition, he should go to another lender.)

In your case, if you have already received the loan and signed a contract that contains an insurance clause, I very much doubt whether you have any right to cancel the insurance as long as any part of the loan is still outstanding.

On the other hand, once the loan has been paid off, the lender can't impose any further insurance requirement on you.  It then becomes a matter of whether your insurance contract is cancelable: again, only the contract will tell you.