A TERMINALLY ill Winchester man has been denied a £100,000 life insurance policy.

Andy Young was diagnosed with bowel cancer last August and despite several operations the cancer spread to his liver.

The 54-year-old prison officer, of Greenhill Road, was given a year to live in February and tried to cash the policy with Aviva, which he said included critical illness cover.

But Mr Young said the company are not paying out because the cover does not apply to the first two years or last 18 months of the 10-year policy, which expires this month.

Mr Young said: “We were not alerted about this when we took out the policy. We accept it is in there but it means we are paying for six-and-a-half years cover rather than 10. If they had rung us at six-and-a-half years I might have taken out another policy.

“I can understand why they have the first two years clause because someone could be trying to pull the wool over their eyes, but the last 18 months just doesn’t make sense.”

But Andy and his wife Vanessa, 49, have been able to cash another £150,000 life insurance policy with Aviva, which still has several years to run.

But a spokesman for Aviva said the policy did not include critical illness cover but rather terminal illness benefit.

The spokesman said: "Terminal illness benefit is paid when the customer is diagnosed with a terminal illness and is expected to live no more than 12 months, as long as the plan has at least 18 months left to run.  It is an acceleration of the death benefit and should not be confused with critical illness cover.

"Terminal illness cover is included within our life insurance policies whereas critical illness cover is a separate benefit. We do not have an exclusion for the final 18 months of a policy for a critical illness claim.

"It is there to help people put their affairs in order if they are unfortunately diagnosed with a terminal illness and not expected to survive the policy term.

"The details of terminal illness benefit are made clear in our policy terms and conditions, post-sale information and our key features documents which are issued to all life insurance customers at the point of purchase.

"While we fully sympathise with the customer’s situation, we are committed to treating all of our customers fairly. For this reason we can only pay valid claims which meet the policy criteria."