By shopping around you will get a variance in price but not by much £10 - £20 but each different applicant you make it will ask if you have been declined or offered a policy on special term on which you will have to answer yes and then complete the fololow up questions.

Your wife has suffered a serious illness for which any critical illness policy would have paid out and by good grace of god a life assuracne policy has not had to pay out but this is enough to scare any insurance company into wanting to ensure that any potential risk (that is what insurance is about) is safe and worthwhile for them to cover.

While I am not a medical person but I do advise and set life policies up for clients and the one thing that is going to be needed in this case is the all clear from the doctor/consultant who was dealing with your wife. It will also be strongly dependant on how virulent (?) the cancer was, whether it was an aggressive strain or not. Once you have been issued with this then the rates for life assurance will reduce quite considerably year on year until after about 5 years clear she may be offered rates on standard terms. I have just completed a policy for a client aged 58 years old and she is now 5 years after the "all clear" of breast cancer and has been offered standard rates. The fact that your wife has been offered a policy at all means that she has a good chance of a significant reduction in the price after a couple of years. This coupled with her age and being a non smoker is always going to help.

To answer your last question, yes there are specialist companies out there but they too have to take on the risk and their prices will not be much different to what the mainstream companies will offer. You have to remember that if there is a claim made then the company has to fork out £200k and thats a serious dent in its annual performance if they did not cover the cost of it for risk.

I would speak to a financial adviser or a mortgage adviser as they can offer you some insight on how best to approach companies, some providers are a little more lenient depending on the type of problem faced with but i would not expect to get the policy much more than £10 - £20 cheaper than currently offered, if at all cheaper, L&G are quite cheap already for prices.

Good Luck

6 years ago my wife underwent an operation to remove a benign brain tumour from her pituitary gland. The operation was a success and she has had MRI scans once a year to confirm no further activity has occurred.

Her lifestyle is completely unaffected since having the tumour removed, she is healthy does not smoke, excersises regularly and does not drink.

With the arrival of our first child, we thought is prudent to obtain life insurance for her. She does not work - the insurance would be purely to fund any childcare requirements should she die.

Having filled out the online moneysuperarket quote function, she was given a provisional quote from Legal & General that was reasonable (c. £20 pcm for c.200k cover), but subject to medical report (given her medical history).

Legal & General have just contacted her having received the medical report, with a revised quote for £200 pcm for the same cover.

This came as a shock. We are in the process of following up with her doctor as to what was written in the report, but I was hoping someone can tell me:

a) I am being naive, and that this level of life insurance is about right

b) L&G do not specialise in insurance for people with prior medical conditions, but others do - if so, who?

Hopefully you can provide some advice!

Thank you in advance