Legal & General Life Insurance Review: Underwriting, Cover and Claims

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Legal & General has been writing life assurance since 1836, and the company behind the policy carries the risk itself rather than placing it with somebody else. Legal and General Assurance Society Limited is registered in England and Wales as company 166055 at One Coleman Street, London EC2R 5AA, and holds firm reference 117659 — authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by both the Financial Conduct Authority and the PRA. Cover starts at £5 a month. In 2025 the company paid nearly 14,000 life insurance claims worth £527 million, part of £992 million paid across 20,621 retail protection claims, or about 56 claims settled a day, and £4.6 billion over the past five years.

What you are buying is a fixed-term policy in one of two shapes. Level cover keeps the same sum assured from the first day to the last; decreasing cover falls roughly in step with a repayment mortgage and costs less for it. You can apply from 18 up to 77 (67 if you add Critical Illness Cover), the term runs from 5 to 50 years, and the policy has to end before your 90th birthday. Terminal illness cover is built in at no extra charge, accidental death benefit up to £300,000 covers you while the application is being assessed, and there is free cover between exchange and completion if you are buying a house. Premiums are guaranteed not to rise unless you change the policy.

The third thing shapes everything else: this is medically underwritten cover. L&G asks about your health, your build, your drinking and whether you have touched nicotine in the past twelve months, then prices you on the answers. More than 80% of applications are processed straight through, with 180 UK-based underwriters picking up the rest. Those questions are the reason the premiums are as low as they are — and they are the part worth taking slowly, because the answers are what a claim gets checked against years later.

£5 a month, £26.33 a month, and the gap between them

The £5 headline is real but it is a floor, not a typical price. L&G's own guide to what life cover costs puts the average premium at £26.33 a month on its 2025 figures, and the average valid life claim it paid that year at £37,788. Both numbers are the company's own, which makes them more useful than any comparison table: they describe what its actual customers pay and receive rather than what a quote engine advertises.

The published worked examples show how sharply age bites. Spend £25 a month over a 25-year term as a non-smoker in good health and L&G's own illustration gives roughly £563,838 of cover at 30, £214,688 at 40, £75,521 at 50 and £23,258 at 60. A 70-year-old paying the same gets about £8,645 over a maximum 19-year term. The same money buys about twenty-four times as much cover at 30 as it does at 60, which is the single strongest argument for buying early rather than shopping hard.

Premiums can be paid monthly or annually and are guaranteed for the life of the policy unless you alter it. There is no cash-in value at any point — this is pure protection, and if you stop paying, the cover stops. Cancel inside the first 30 days and every premium comes back. Cancel later on a monthly plan and nothing does; annual payers get a proportionate refund.

Decreasing cover, and the interest rate you cannot see until you have bought

Decreasing cover is built for a repayment mortgage. The sum assured steps down over the term, which is why it is cheaper than level cover for the same starting amount, and why it is the default choice for people whose only real liability is the house. L&G sets the rate of decline using an assumed mortgage interest rate, and that rate appears on your Policy Schedule when the policy starts.

The company is candid about the consequence in its own terms and conditions, document reference LG2022, dated 2026/07: "If the interest rate we apply is less than the interest rate that is actually applied to your repayment mortgage, or your mortgage changes, the amount we pay out may not be enough to repay your mortgage in full." That is the whole risk of decreasing cover in one sentence. If you remortgage onto a higher rate, extend the term, borrow more for an extension, or move to a bigger house, the two curves separate and nobody tells you.

What the pre-sale documents do not carry is the assumed rate itself. It is not on the product page, not in the FAQs and not in the policy summary — it is disclosed on the schedule after you have applied. A buyer choosing between level and decreasing cover cannot compare the two properly without it, and asking for the figure before the cooling-off period runs out is worth the phone call. The 30-day window exists precisely for that kind of check.

Level cover carries no equivalent uncertainty, and it is the sensible shape where the money is meant to replace an income or cover a fixed liability such as an inheritance tax bill rather than a shrinking debt.

Where the health questions stop and a doctor's report starts

L&G publishes the thresholds at which an application stops being a form and becomes a medical file. Its guide to underwriting limits, reference Q41806, dated 10/25, sets out which evidence is triggered automatically by a combination of age and sum assured. A GP's report first appears on life cover of £75,001 to £100,000 for applicants aged 71 to 74. A medical examination starts at £100,001 to £150,000 for ages 66 to 70. Nurse screening begins at £200,001 to £250,000 for ages 61 to 65, a full blood profile at £250,001 to £300,000 for ages 66 to 70, and an exercise ECG only at £2,000,001 to £3,000,000 for the same age band.

A 35-year-old asking for £250,000 of cover, in other words, is very unlikely to see a doctor at all. A 72-year-old asking for £80,000 almost certainly will. Financial evidence follows a separate ladder: nothing is required automatically up to £1,500,000 of cover, and a Personal Assurance Questionnaire is needed above £3,500,000.

Evidence has a shelf life. For life cover up to £500,000 it stays valid for 6 months; above £500,000 it is 3 months. Critical illness evidence runs to 6 months up to £350,000 and 3 months above it. Let an application drift and the tests may have to be repeated.

Two definitions do more work than any other. Smoker rates apply to anyone who has used cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, pipes or nicotine replacement within the last 12 months — vaping counts, and so do patches. Ex-smoker rates can apply to someone who has smoked within the last 5 years but not the last 12 months. Stopping for a year and re-applying is one of the few levers a customer controls, and L&G says so on its own pages.

The medical report has your name on it, and the law gives you first look

Where an insurer does want a report from your GP, the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 governs what happens next, and almost nobody buying life cover knows it exists. Section 3 says an insurer may not even ask your doctor for a report unless it has told you it intends to and you have said yes: "that person ... has notified the individual that he proposes to make the application; and the individual has notified the applicant that he consents to the making of the application."

Section 4 gives you the right to read the report before it goes anywhere. Your doctor must not send it until you have seen it, or until 21 days have passed from the date of the application without you arranging to. Section 5 lets you ask, before consenting to its release, for any part you think is "incorrect or misleading" to be amended — and if the doctor declines, you may attach your own written statement of disagreement, which travels with the report. Section 6 requires the practitioner to keep a copy for at least six months. Section 7 is the limit on all of this: a doctor may withhold anything likely to cause "serious harm to the physical or mental health" of you or somebody else.

The practical value is that GP records are frequently wrong in small ways — a coded condition that was ruled out, a drinking estimate written down in a hurry, a referral that came to nothing. Those errors are cheap to correct at application and expensive to argue about at claim. Twenty-one days is a short window, so if you want to exercise the right, say so when you give consent rather than afterwards.

Genetic tests: one condition, one threshold, and a code that binds the insurer

Anyone who has had genetic testing, or is thinking about it, has a specific and often misunderstood protection. Under the Code on Genetic Testing and Insurance, agreed between the Association of British Insurers and the government, an insurer "will never require or pressure any applicant to undertake a predictive or diagnostic genetic test", and may ask about a predictive test result in one situation only: Huntington's disease, and then only on life cover above £500,000. The equivalent ceilings are £300,000 for critical illness and £30,000 a year for income protection. Below those figures the result of a predictive test is simply none of the insurer's business.

The government's three-year review of the Code, published 5 March 2026, gives the compliance picture for 2024: 2,700 predictive test results and 5,013 diagnostic results reported by insurers, five complaints about how genetic information was used, all resolved directly with the customers, and 93% of life policies written below the £500,000 threshold. Diagnostic tests are a different matter — where a test confirms or rules out a condition you already have symptoms of, the result is ordinary medical history and is treated as such.

The Code is a commitment rather than a statute, which is worth knowing, but it is monitored, published and reviewed by government, and a family history of an inherited condition need not keep anybody out of a mainstream policy.

Getting an answer wrong does not always mean getting nothing

The received wisdom is that a mistake on the form voids the policy. The reality set out in the LG2022 terms is more graduated, and more useful. Where information was given carelessly rather than deliberately, L&G may reprice or reduce the cover using a formula based on the premium that would have been charged had the truth been known — so a policy bought at half the correct premium pays out roughly half the claim rather than nothing. Deliberate or reckless misrepresentation is the serious case, and that is where a policy is cancelled outright.

The company's own warning on its decreasing cover page is blunt: "If you fail to mention something like a medical condition, for example, we may not pay out in the event of a claim." The way to avoid the argument entirely is to over-declare. Nothing is lost by mentioning an investigation that came to nothing; a great deal can be lost by leaving it out.

Disputes are rare in this product line. The Financial Ombudsman Service's annual complaints data, published 21 May 2026, records 884 new term assurance complaints at a 17% uphold rate, against 214,600 complaints and a 30% average across all financial products. Critical illness cover ran at 647 complaints and 12% upheld, income protection at 942 and 21%. Older whole-of-life plans fare worse — 414 non-reviewable cases at 26% and 434 reviewable at 38% — which says something about the products, not about term cover. Term assurance is one of the least-disputed things a UK consumer can buy.

What L&G actually paid, and to whom

The most recent full breakdown L&G publishes for its retail protection book covers 2023, and it is worth reading alongside the 2025 totals. That year the company accepted 97% of life insurance claims — 13,007 payouts totalling £519 million, an average of £39,916, at an average age at claim of 70. Cancer accounted for 32.6% of causes, heart-related conditions 21.7% and neurological conditions 5.9%.

Terminal illness cover, the benefit that pays before death, was accepted on 92% of claims: 1,149 payouts worth £139 million, averaging £121,621 at an average age of 56, and 92.9% of them for cancer. Critical Illness Cover ran at 93% accepted across 3,597 claims worth £255 million, averaging £70,978 at an average age of 48, two-thirds of them cancer claims.

The 2025 figures fill in the rest: £1.388 billion paid across more than 26,000 retail and group claims, of which retail protection was £992 million; terminal illness alone accounted for £161 million at an average payout above £125,000, and critical illness for over £291 million. In 2024 the company paid 14,067 life claims worth £583 million, and its oldest claimant that year was 101.

Notice the pattern in the acceptance rates. The gap between 97% on life claims and 92% on terminal illness is not administrative meanness — it is the difference between a fact and a prognosis. Terminal illness requires a hospital consultant and L&G's own Medical Officer to agree the illness is "expected to lead to death within 12 months", and it cannot be claimed at all if the policy has less than two years left to run.

Trusts, probate and the tax threshold that has not moved since 2009

A life policy paid into your estate is part of your estate. The inheritance tax nil-rate band has stood at £325,000 since 6 April 2009 and is now legislated to stay there until 5 April 2031, with the residence nil-rate band at £175,000 and a taper starting on estates above £2 million. The freeze to 2029-30 was announced at Autumn Budget 2024, and the government's own costing expects it to pull an extra 1,400 estates into charge in 2028-29 and 2,900 in 2029-30. A £300,000 policy landing on top of a house is exactly the kind of sum that tips an estate over.

Writing the policy in trust changes both the tax position and the timing. L&G's own guidance is that money from a policy in trust "will usually not form part of your estate for Inheritance Tax purposes", and that beneficiaries "could receive the payout within a couple of weeks of the death certificate being issued" rather than waiting for probate. There are four options — discretionary, flexible, survivor's discretionary and absolute — and no added cost for using them, whether you set the trust up at outset or later.

The trade-off is real and L&G states it: with some trusts "you may not be able to change your mind", and trustees take on legal responsibilities for how the money is distributed. An absolute trust in particular fixes the beneficiaries permanently. For most people with a partner and children the discretionary or flexible route keeps enough room to manoeuvre, but it is a decision worth taking with advice rather than through a web form.

The gaps in the paperwork, and what the complaints figures show

Three things are missing from the pre-sale documents that a careful buyer would want. The assumed mortgage interest rate behind decreasing cover, as above, is not published anywhere before the schedule arrives. Neither is the minimum or maximum sum assured on the main life product — the FAQs, the policy summary QGI14768 (dated 2026/01) and the product page all leave it out, so the only way to discover what £5 a month buys a 45-year-old is to complete a quote. And the £5 figure itself carries no footnote saying how many customers achieve it. The Advertising Standards Authority's published position on "from" pricing is that a significant proportion of customers should be able to obtain the advertised price, and it has indicated that under 10% is unlikely to count as significant. L&G's own average of £26.33 a month is the more informative number, and it is buried in a guide rather than shown beside the headline.

The Defaqto 5 Star badge on both the life and critical illness pages carries no year. Defaqto reissues its ratings annually, so an undated star rating tells a reader nothing about whether the product still holds it. The Moneyfacts award is handled better: L&G names it as Life Insurance Provider of the Year (Direct) at the 2026 Consumer Moneyfacts awards, its seventh consecutive year, which is a dated, checkable claim.

On complaints, L&G publishes its own regulatory return. For the six months to 30 June 2026, its insurance and pure protection business opened 3,312 complaints and closed 3,172, a rate of 0.76 per 1,000 policies in force, with 46.40% closed inside three days, 49.65% within eight weeks and 34.96% upheld. The main cause was general administration and customer service. That is a low rate per policy, but the direction is worth noting: in the previous six months the same business opened 2,895 complaints at 0.66 per 1,000. Volumes went up, though the uphold rate came down from 39.25%.

One smaller thing. The £100 Amazon gift card offered to new customers is paid six months after the policy starts and only if premiums are up to date. It is a perfectly ordinary incentive, but it rewards starting a policy rather than choosing the right sum assured, and a hundred pounds is less than four months of the average premium. Buy the cover you need and treat the voucher as change.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 3 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.