I'm talking about life insurance on loans (Mortgage Protection Insurance), not fire or house insurance on mortgages which is much more flexible. Also, it depen

I'm talking about life insurance on loans (Mortgage Protection Insurance), not fire or house insurance on mortgages which is much more flexible. Also, it depends on the bank. I'm pretty sure it must be much easier in the U.S., the cases I know of are in South America (they basically won't give you the mortgage unless you use their approved overpriced life insurance, which is very low compared to the principal anyways). It seems that it's a little less dodgy in the U.S., but not too much: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/052014/why-you-dont-need-mortgage-protection-life-insurance.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/052014... Edit: a related case in Canada: http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/04/15/Insurance-Giant-Defraud/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/04/15/Insurance-Giant-Defraud/ Edit: exactly what I'm talking about, an English example http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?396772-Is-Life-Insurance-compulsory-on-a-mortgage http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?39... Edit: another example of how banks use other products to drive profits, but this one misfired: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-3035922/Banks-forced-pay-billions-compensation-mis-selling-payment-protection-insurance.html http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-3035922/B... Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance " the insurance would commonly make the bank/provider more money than the interest on the original loan, such that many mainstream personal loan providers made little or no profit on the loans themselves; all or almost all profit was derived from PPI commission and profit share "