Scots mum with MS refused health insurance payout for 'failing to disclose symptoms' a year before she had any

A mother with multiple sclerosis has been refused a £130,000 health insurance payout for failing to disclose her symptoms - a year before she claims she had any.Jade Taylor was planning to use the six-figure sum to help pay for life-changing treatment in Mexico this September.

The mother-of-two applied for life and critical illness covers in March 2019 after splitting from the father of her two young children and was told the policy would “go live” on July 18 that year.She paid £1,500 in premiums over the next two-and-a-half years with the belief that she would be awarded the lump sum should she fall seriously ill.

But after a “bombshell” diagnosis that she had primary progressive MS in February 2021, insurer Zurich has now refused to pay the funds she planned to spend on revolutionary stem cell treatment to reverse the disease.Miss Taylor blames a catalogue of errors, including inaccurate information in her medical notes and being unaware the start of her policy had been delayed.

The insurance firm claims Miss Taylor, 38, failed to disclose “neurological symptoms” it said she had for seven months before applying for the policy.A doctor wrote a letter clarifying that the “numbness” she had been suffering for a year was “a term which relates to skin, not the leg itself” and was a result of post surgical scarring, after she lost 10 stone in weight and had 1lb in excess skin removed from each leg.A spokesman, however, claimed had Miss Taylor told the insurer about her symptoms, it would have “postponed her application, pending a full investigation, and her applications would have been declined at the point of an MS diagnosis.”Miss Taylor was not diagnosed with MS until February 2021 - two years after first applying for the