Lesson 1 of 3 · 8 min
The date the file closes
After sixty months of continuous cover, an insurer can no longer contest a claim over something you did or did not disclose when you bought the policy.
The fear people carry about health cover is not that it costs too much. It is that years after buying it, at the worst possible moment, someone reads the form they filled in and decides a box was ticked wrongly. There is a date after which that argument is over.
Read that carefully, because two words in it do a great deal of work. "Continuous" means the cover has to have run without a gap. And the exception is established fraud — not a suspicion of fraud, and not a form filled in carelessly years ago. Ordinary imperfect disclosure stops being a live issue once the sixty months are done.
Your turn
How many months of continuous coverage complete the moratorium period?
So should I just wait five years before claiming?
KabirTara
Kabirasking
If the file closes at sixty months, is it safer not to claim before then?
Taraexplaining
No. Cover you do not use is money you gave away, and a claim in year two is exactly what you bought it for. The moratorium is not a reward for waiting — it is a limit on how long a disclosure argument can be made at all.
Kabirasking
Then what does it change for me?
Taraexplaining
It changes what a lapse costs. Letting a policy break and starting a fresh one puts you back at month zero on a clock you had nearly finished, and nothing on the new policy document tells you what you gave up.
Myth
“An insurer can reject a claim over an old form at any time during the life of the policy.”
False
After sixty months of continuous coverage, no claim may be contested on grounds of non-disclosure or misrepresentation. Established fraud is the only route left, and it has to be established rather than alleged.
Check yourself
1 / 3
Kabir asks
How long is the moratorium period?
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