Applying for life & disability insurance can be a fast and relatively easy process, but what if you have a medical issue and are filling prescriptions for that condition?
Medical issues can cause additional time in underwriting and might affect your ability to get coverage. In addition, this can cause mark-ups in premium costs and reduced coverage terms. You can spend time and effort getting your policy through underwriting only to receive a less than favorable offer.
Often when shopping for coverage online, you will see ‘super preferred’ rates offered when plugging in your data for a quick quotes. These costs aren’t necessarily rates factoring in your specific health history and prescription history.
Now, what if I told you that we can filter the insurance providers depending on what the medical issue is? We call this a preliminary medical quote, and its intent is to prescreen an insurance provider to find how they might offer on a person of your age, gender, height and weight by providing them with brief medical summary.
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Height: 6’2
Weight: 271 lbs
History: ADHD, OCD and Anxiety Associated with OCD
Carriers’ prescreened with a possible outcome:
Due to having three diagnoses, the carrier would probably need to limit the benefit period to 5 years, without a Purchase Rider. The height and weight would also require a rating of 25%.
Quick Vocab on this pre-screen:
- Benefit Periods are how long your disability claim would payout, if you were deemed disabled.
- Purchase Riders are your options to buy more coverage in the future, no medical underwriting and no exclusions for future health conditions that may arise.
- Rating are increases to your premium costs if you are more of a risk to the insurance carrier. They then charge more instead of declining the applicant.
If this was life insurance, the guidelines could be a little different. Typically any medications push someone from best rates to next best rates when compared to someone with the same health otherwise; given that same person doesn’t take those medications. **Please note: These are overall general statements to give you an idea of what to expect before you apply.**
Our Team can walk you through your specific health history to give you an idea of what carriers may be best for you.
What does this mean to You?
Start your application for coverage early if training, if possible, to get the lower costs and best approvals. However, at any time, we can submit your specifications and a summary directly to the carriers, without any identifying information to our top insurance providers as a first step.
The providers will review the information provided and give us a best-case scenario on how they might possibly offer. These tentative offers do not guarantee coverage and are subject to full underwriting review, but it will help us decide what carrier you might have the best possible outcome with. This is a great tool if you think you might have a medical issue that will affect your coverage. It can save you time and money and that is always a good thing!
Interested in submitting a preliminary medical quote?
Not a problem, please contact MD Financial Services to speak to a financial professional today!
