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To identify loan insurance exclusions related to your occupation or hobbies, start with your contract documents and describe your situation precisely to the insurer. Ask the insurer in writing which cover would be affected, under what circumstances and which clause its answer is based on. A simulation helps you prepare for a comparison; it does not replace reading the proposal and the information notice.
This guide concerns borrower insurance for a mortgage in France. It offers a reading method, not personalised advice on your cover: only a review of your documents and circumstances will clarify the points that need confirmation.
Why read the exclusions before choosing?
Borrower insurance covers all or part of the remaining mortgage payments in the situations specified by the cover. Before making a mortgage offer, the lender may require insurance and set the minimum cover.
Cover stated in a proposal should therefore be read alongside its conditions for being triggered and its exclusions. For your occupation and your hobbies alike, the practical question is: what does the contract provide if an event occurs during the activity you practise? Do not infer the answer from the name of the cover alone; look for the applicable clause and ask for clarification if its meaning is unclear to you.
The lender provides a standardised information sheet stating, among other things, the minimum cover required and the approximate cost of the contract it could offer. It also provides a personalised sheet defining the features of the contract to obtain, including the type and content of the cover and the amount of the loan that must be insured.
Which documents should you examine?
Start by gathering the personalised sheet, the insurance proposal and the information notice. The proposal states, among other things, the cover granted, the conditions for triggering it and the exclusions. All the clauses of the insurance contract must appear in the information notice.
In these documents, identify the passages describing the risks covered, the conditions to be met for a claim to be covered and the exclusions. Also note any terms whose scope seems uncertain to you. Keep the document name and the clause heading so that you can ask a precise question, rather than simply asking whether you are “covered”.
The personalised sheet is used to check the lender's requirements; the proposal and the notice are used to understand the cover offered. Keep these reviews separate: an answer about your activity should be traceable to the relevant cover and the contractual documents.
Occupation: describe the work you actually do
To prepare for your discussion with the insurer, describe your work beyond its title: what tasks do you perform, in what setting and under what circumstances? If your work involves different assignments, present them separately. The aim is to give the insurer sufficiently precise information to respond about your situation.
Then look in the notice for passages that could relate to this work. Does any wording seem to refer to certain tasks or circumstances? Ask the insurer to clarify how it understands the clause in light of your description, and which cover would be affected.
You could phrase your request as follows: “I perform the following tasks as part of my work: [description]. In light of my proposal and the notice, which cover applies if an event occurs while I am performing these tasks? Does an exclusion or a particular condition apply? Please specify the corresponding clause.”
Hobbies: specify how you practise them before drawing conclusions
Apply the same method to each hobby you want examined. State what you do and describe the circumstances relevant to your situation. If your practice varies, explain these differences rather than limiting yourself to the name of the activity.
Compare your description with the words used in the notice. If a clause seems to relate to your hobby, ask the insurer to confirm its scope and the cover concerned in writing. If the answer is not clear, ask for clarification of the exact passage in the contract: a general answer about the hobby may leave open the question of the particular circumstances in which you practise it.
For example: “I practise [activity] under the following conditions: [description]. Can you confirm the cover concerned in writing and tell me whether an exclusion or a particular condition applies to this practice? Which clause is your answer based on?”
Compare the answers and the cover
For each activity, keep your description, the question sent, the answer received and the clause cited together. Read the answer alongside the proposal and the notice: does it relate to the activity and circumstances you described? Does it identify the cover concerned? If it is not clear, rephrase your request before making a decision.
You may approach an insurer other than the one proposed by the lender. The chosen contract must, however, meet the criteria defined in the personalised sheet provided by the lender. To compare proposals, therefore, examine both these criteria and the answers obtained about your occupation and hobbies.
The lender's simulation and the approximate cost shown in the standardised sheet are elements to help you prepare. To understand the cover being considered, also return to the cover, triggering conditions and exclusions in the proposal. If a point remains ambiguous, ask for a written answer rather than assuming that contracts treat your activity in the same way.
Reviewing an existing contract?
Return to your contract notice and the documents you have, then describe again the activities on which you want clarification. Ask the insurer to relate its answer to the clauses applicable to your contract. This approach can help you prepare for a possible comparison, without presuming the outcome.
After signing the mortgage agreement, you can change insurer at any time. Before the change, you must obtain the lender's agreement to the new contract; the lender can check that it meets the level of cover of the original insurance.
Before choosing, therefore, check the lender's requirements and the new insurer's answers about your situation separately. Keep the written exchanges with your documents: they will make it easier to review them later or request clarification.