The marketing manager of niche broker Unusual Risks said several large life offices such as PruProtect and MetLife stipulate in the terms and conditions of their life insurance policies that applicants must be UK residents and paying tax in this country to qualify for cover.
Life assurance provider Friends Life currently offers expat cover.
Mr Morgan said he was “shocked” to discover in the course of his research that only 25 per cent of UK insurance companies offer life insurance to British expats.
He said: “This is a poor figure considering the number of life insurers in the market and the fact that British expats need a range of life insurance products to choose from as much as British residents.
“Some insurers have traditionally been pan-regional providers of insurance-based bonds and have offshore arms going back decades. So I do not understand why they are withdrawing from this part of the international market.”
Mr Morgan added that many insurers will only accept applications providing clients live in the UK for more than 26 weeks of the year.
He said: “My response to this is that they might as well not provide the insurance at all for all the difference that condition makes.”
A spokesman for PruProtect said: “We don’t currently offer cover for expats, purely because our regulatory permissions relate to current British residents only.” MetLife did not respond to requests for comment.
