Life insurance and genetic testing in Australia: What changed on 1 April 2026
Picture a scene that, until recently, was playing out in clinics across Australia. A doctor sits down with a patient whose mother had breast cancer in her thirties and whose aunt had ovarian cancer, and explains there's a genetic test that could tell her whether she carries the same risk. She picks up the consent form, reads it carefully, and stops on one line near the bottom: this may affect your future insurance applications. She puts the pen down.
She wasn't alone in that decision. A Victorian study on Lynch syndrome, a hereditary condition that significantly increases bowel cancer risk, found a pattern of people declining tests their doctors had specifically recommended, because of what those results might do to their cover. Separate research found that 86% of people with cancer-predisposing genetic variants who applied for new insurance after testing ran into trouble getting it.
A system that was supposed to price risk rationally was instead pushing Australians to stay deliberately uninformed about their own health. From 1 April 2026, that changed.
What kinds of genetic tests does the new rule apply to?
There are two kinds of genetic testing. Diagnostic testing is used when you already have symptoms, to confirm what's going on. Predictive testing tells you whether you carry a gene that increases your risk of a condition you don't yet have, with examples like the BRCA gene and breast cancer, Lynch syndrome and bowel cancer, certain hereditary heart conditions like cardiomyopathy, or Huntington's disease.
The new law only applies to predictive testing. If you're symptom-free and went for a test out of caution, those results no longer reach the insurer's underwriter (the person who assesses your risk and decides what cover to offer).
How did life insurance and genetic testing work before 1 April 2026?
Australia operated under what was called a partial moratorium. Insurers had agreed among themselves not to use predictive genetic test results for smaller policies. If you applied for less than $500,000 of life or TPD cover (total and permanent disability cover, which pays a lump sum if you can't work again), less than $200,000 of trauma cover (a lump sum if you're diagnosed with a defined serious illness like cancer or a heart attack), or less than $4,000 a month of income protection, your test results stayed out of the underwriting decision.
Above those limits, your results were fair game. The insurer could decline cover, add an exclusion (a condition they carve out so they won't pay claims related to it), or apply a loading (an extra charge on your premium because of assessed higher risk) based on a gene you might never express.
The moratorium wasn't legislation, it was a voluntary agreement between insurers. The questions still appeared on application forms, the data was still being collected, and the agreement was simply that below those limits, the information wouldn't be used.
The kind of person who got burned by this was anyone applying for the cover most working Australians actually need: a homeowner with a mortgage, a parent with dependants, a higher earner with real income to protect. The thresholds caught almost anyone with serious financial responsibilities.
Why did the genetic testing rules need to change?
Insurance pricing is meant to be rational. Higher risk pays more, lower risk pays less. That's how car insurance works, that's how home insurance works.
The problem with the old genetic testing rules was that they punished the wrong behaviour. The person who had never been to a GP and didn't know their own family history was treated as a lower risk than the person who had researched it, gone for the test, and now had a clearer picture of what to watch for.
The proactive person was worse off than the person staying deliberately uninformed.
Our adviser Kat puts it bluntly. "If you're being proactive about your health and understanding your genetic makeup and I'm not, should you be worse off for it?"
She has been on the inside of this. One of her clients had a BRCA test booked when they began working on insurance advice together. The risk was that if the test came back positive, exclusions could be applied across the life, TPD, and income protection cover the client needed. So Kat split the application into two stages. They applied for trauma cover first, which sat under the $200,000 threshold and was therefore not subject to the moratorium. They waited for the genetic test result, which came back negative. Then they went ahead with the rest of the cover, clean.
The client got the right outcome. The process was bent around the rules of a system that everyone, including the insurers themselves, knew was producing the wrong incentives.
What actually changed on 1 April 2026?
The Life Insurance Contract Act 1995 was amended. Insurers can no longer use predictive genetic test results in underwriting. Not above the old thresholds, not below them. The result of your BRCA test, your Lynch syndrome test, your hereditary cardiomyopathy screen, none of it can influence whether you get cover or what it costs.
What can insurers still ask about after the change?
Family history hasn't gone anywhere. If your mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late thirties, an insurer can still factor that in. A negative gene test won't necessarily clear it.
Kat saw this just last week. A client whose mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer in her late thirties was looking at a breast cancer exclusion on her trauma cover, and asked whether a negative BRCA test would remove it. The honest answer was probably not. The family history is the family history, with or without the gene.
You also still need to disclose your medical history. If you have symptoms, or you've already developed a condition, that remains part of the underwriting picture.
So the test result itself stops mattering. The relatives in your family tree still do.
When does the change take effect for each insurer?
Insurers have been given six months to update their systems. The hard deadline is 1 October 2026. Some have already moved on it. Others are still working through it. So if you have an application in progress, or you've had a previous application affected by a genetic test result, the insurer you went with last year may not have updated yet, but a different insurer might have already.
Working with someone who tracks the changes week by week makes a real difference here.
Should I review my policy if a genetic test affected it?
If your existing policy was loaded or excluded because of a genetic test result, the terms you locked in then are not the terms you'd be offered now. That alone is worth a review.
And if you've been delaying a genetic test your doctor recommended because of what it might do to your cover, the reason you were delaying it just disappeared. The pen is back on the table. What are you going to do with it?
If your existing cover was affected by a genetic test, or you've been holding off on getting insurance at all because of these rules, request a policy review with Skye and we'll look at what's possible for you under the new framework.
Frequently asked questions
Can my insurer use my genetic test results from before 1 April 2026? No. The new rule applies to all predictive genetic test results, regardless of when they were taken. Past results no longer factor into a new underwriting decision.
Does the change affect my existing life insurance policy? Existing policies are unchanged. But if your current cover was loaded or has an exclusion because of a genetic test, applying to a new insurer now could mean cleaner terms. Worth investigating with an adviser before cancelling anything.
Do I still need to disclose my family medical history? Yes. Family history is separate from genetic test results, and insurers can still use it when assessing your application.
What about diagnostic genetic tests for a condition I already have? The new rule applies only to predictive testing (testing when you have no symptoms). If you've had diagnostic testing because of symptoms or a confirmed condition, your medical history is still part of the underwriting picture.
Will premiums go up across the board because of this change? The industry has raised concern that more people with known genetic risks may now apply for higher cover, which could affect claims rates over time. A formal five-year review will examine this. For most applicants, the immediate impact is more accessible cover with fewer exclusions.
Kat Dean and Phil Thompson covered all of this in detail in a recent Deep Dive: the old rules, what changed on 1 April, what to do if your application was affected, and where the new five-year review is likely to land. Watch the full episode here.