Real estate credit: borrower insurance increasingly protective against serious illnesses

BNP Paribas Cardif now covers HIV patients in its borrower insurance contract. More and more bankers and insurers are including borrowers with serious illnesses, through personal initiatives or sectoral commitments.

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This is a double penalty for borrowers suffering from serious illnesses. In addition to their pathologies – sclerosis, Parkinson’s – they must pay extremely high borrower insurance contributions, also called additional premiums, if they wish to become owners. And again, if they are not immediately excluded from this type of coverage. But that was before. Because bankers and insurers have begun their transformation to become more “inclusive”.

Latest: Cardif, the subsidiary of BNP Paribas, announced on December 1 that borrowers suffering from HIV will neither be subject to exclusion nor to additional premiums for all property loans of less than 1 million euros, i.e. the vast majority of loans. To be considered an “ordinary” insured person, the HIV viral load must be undetectable at the time the contract is taken out. In France, 180,000 people are affected by HIV and 93% of people receiving treatment could thus be eligible for the Cardiff system, specifies BNP Paribas. A novelty justified by the “latest advances in HIV treatments”.

As a reminder, borrower insurance, systematically required by banks when taking out a real estate loan, guarantees repayment of installments in the event of death, disability or incapacity to work. The insurer or the bank thus takes over from the borrower if the latter is no longer able to meet the monthly loan payments.

More protective than the Aeras convention

BNP thus goes further than the Aeras convention (Insure and borrow with an increased health risk). Established in 2007, and signed by the country’s major banks and insurers, it allows people who do not yet benefit from the right to be forgotten – borrower insurance without any price penalty five years after the end of therapeutic treatment – nor from removal of the health questionnaire – which prohibits insurers from asking about the customer’s current or previous pathologies – to benefit from a capping of additional premiums, or even their elimination. In the specific case of HIV, the Aeras convention only applies if the viral load is undetectable in the 12 months preceding the subscription of the insurance, while Cardif does not require any delay.

Before BNP Paribas, other large establishments stood out for making their contracts more inclusive. CNP Assurances announced in March that it was allowing women cured of breast cancer to benefit from borrower insurance without additional premiums or exclusions. A measure applied to all customers of the Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE), BoursoBank and La Banque Postale group. The measure had already been adopted within Crédit Agricole in 2023. Crédit Mutuel had paved the way by removing the obligation of the medical questionnaire for its “loyal” customers from 2021, before this system was extended to all banks in the following years with the entry into force of the Lemoine law.

Caregivers also covered

But the borrower insurance revolution is not limited to sick borrowers. Their loved ones also benefit. In 2023, all insurers have committed to the Financial Sector Advisory Committee to introduce a guarantee for caregivers in their borrower insurance contracts by July 2025. Players, like BPCE , the Postal Bank or Cardif in fact, have integrated this clause at no additional cost into their coverage. It allows parents forced to stop work to temporarily care for their sick or disabled children to benefit from payment of their monthly loan payment. The other establishments still have seven months to honor their commitment.