Life insurance companies are to stop asking questions about applicants' sexuality that have enabled them to discriminate against gay men.

Insurance application forms currently include a question about the applicant's sexual orientation. In many cases, if a male applicant declares himself to be gay, the insurer will ask him to take an HIV test before proceeding with the application.

But from the end of September, the emphasis will switch to behaviour rather than sexuality, with insurers asking: 'In the last five years have you been exposed to the risk of HIV infection?'

The Association of British Insurers' statement of best practice on HIV and insurance, drawn up last October, recognises that being a gay man does not necessarily mean a person is at higher risk of HIV infection. 'The person concerned may be celibate, or may always have protected sex.' It goes on to state that insurers must have clear reasons for asking an applicant to take an HIV test, and must make these available to the applicant on request. They include:

· Answering 'yes' to the question about exposure to risk of HIV.

· Having been diagnosed with a sexually-transmitted disease with long-term health implications.

· Being resident in, or visiting, a non-UK country with high HIV prevalence - and a list of countries.

· Applying for a relatively large amount of insurance (typically, £250,000 for a single man or £500,000 for a married man or woman).

· Intravenous drug abuse.

· Blood transfusions or surgery.

Tony Jupp, chief underwriter at Norwich Union Life, says that although the government originally identified gay men as one group likely to be at higher risk of catching the HIV virus, 'we accept that the world changes, so from the end of September we will be changing our stance from asking people about their sexuality and towards their behaviour patterns. It will mean that whether you are male, female, gay, heterosexual, 20, or 50 years old, you will still be asked the same question.'

Peter Tatchell, of the gay human rights group OutRage!, welcomes the move, but adds: 'It's taken an unbelievably long time for the insurance industry to remedy this homophobic discrimination. The intrusive and discriminative questions and often inflated premiums for gay men were brought in as a panicked, knee-jerk reaction in the early 1980s.

'Insurance chiefs lumped all gay men together in a category marked promiscuous and high risk of HIV, ignoring the fact that some are celibate, many are in long-term, monogamous relationships and most stick to safe sex, which carries little or no risk of HIV infection.'

Many gay applicants have found the automatic request for an HIV test intrusive and insulting. One Cash reader, a former sexual health worker who was recently asked to have an HIV test by Legal & General, says: 'I have been tested previously and do not have HIV, and have not been at risk of HIV.

'I find this policy of compulsory testing deeply offensive, discriminatory and very likely an infringement of my human rights Do they ask the same of heterosexuals, who are probably more likely to have had unprotected sex? I very much doubt it.'

A guidance note sent by Legal & General to this applicant stated that the test was necessary because of the size of the policy he had applied for. But Russ Whitworth, claims and underwriting director for Legal & General, later admitted to Cash that the policy size - just over £100,000 - would not normally trigger such a request, and that it was 'standard' in the industry to ask gay men to undergo HIV tests.

'We're not trying to discriminate against gay men but against the HIV virus,' he said. 'If [the applicant] had been an IV drug user we would have got him tested. We need to protect our existing customers from the cost of too many [policyholders] dying from Aids.'

Whitworth said Legal & General also requests some heterosexual applicants to be tested, but was unable to disclose how many.

Applicants tempted to lie about their exposure to the virus may still be caught out. Norwich Union's Jupp says: 'We will still be carrying out random HIV tests when the sum assured reaches a predetermined figure. If someone makes a conscious decision not to answer a question truthfully and the worst happens within a short space of time, we do look carefully at early claims.'