‘My mother died from a heart attack, but Aviva won't pay her £60k life insurance'

Yahoo

24-07-2025

Is your family's life insurer refusing to pay out? Email: [e-mail].
Dear Telegraph Money,
My mother died recently at the age of 70 from a heart attack. We didn't know she was ill, so it was very sudden.
Because of how she died, we were given a provisional death certificate, while the coroners carried out more checks. This proves that she had died, and we were told that this should be enough to take care of her financial administration.
But Aviva told us that they needed to know exactly how she died in order to pay out her life insurance policies.
She had two life insurance policies – one just for her valued at about £10,000, and a joint one with my dad for approximately £50,000.
But given that the policies promise to pay out on death – and my mother has definitely died – why are Aviva refusing to pay? The money was supposed to help cover the funeral costs, but if they won't pay until a full death certificate is issued, we could be waiting for three months.
Can you help me convince them to pay out for my mother's death?
– Miss M
Dear Miss M,
I am sorry to hear about your mother. It's an incredibly stressful time for your family and it seems that, despite having official documentation, Aviva has made this worse for you.
Its terms state that on policies taken out recently, as your mother's was, the insurer must check for cause of death. Aviva contacted the coroner to verify that all was as it should be, and that there were no suspicious circumstances in play.
One reason that insurers could refuse to pay out would be if your mother had not disclosed health problems which she knew about when she took out the policy.
But you told me that this was not the case, and that none of your family – including your mother – had known about her condition.
Aviva admitted that there had been delays on their part in getting all of the information they needed from the coroners, which they received on July 7.
On July 10, after The Telegraph got in touch, they confirmed with your father that the policies would be paid out as soon as possible.
The insurer also offered £250 in compensation for its role in the delayed payment. Your father accepted this, and was pleased to be able to refocus his efforts on your mother's upcoming funeral.
An Aviva spokesman said: 'We are very sorry to hear about our customer's passing and apologise for the distress caused to her husband and family over the delay in paying out her life insurance policies. We appreciate this must be a difficult time.
'We always look to settle customer claims as quickly as possible and our team followed normal procedure to request a full death certificate and to then get further information from the coroner when this wasn't available.
'We recognise that delays by us in requesting and processing this information has caused additional worry. We have now accepted the claim and by way of apology for the trouble and upset caused we have offered £250 compensation.'
The company added: 'We are looking at how we can make improvements so that payments can be made as quickly as possible in future.'
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.