North Star Disability Insurance Consultants - Other Occupations

The Facts About Disability

COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why Disability Insurance?

Most Professionals realize that their most important asset, especially coming out of school or training, is their future ability to earn an income. In many instances, people spend an extraordinary amount of money and time to secure their specialization or to learn their trade...(READ MORE)

What is the difference between group and private?

Most employers will have a suite of benefits offered to their employees, including Long-term Disability Benefits. But there are some key differences that you should be aware of that make a group plan less beneficial in some circumstances when a disability occurs...(READ MORE)

How much DI do I need?

This is always a somewhat difficult question. If you are disabled tomorrow, you probably want to get as much disability coverage as you can lay your hands on. However, obviously the larger the benefit the greater the cost will be....(READ MORE)

When should I acquire DI?

Picking up private disability insurance near the ladder of your training if available, or at the very beginning of your career is important for a couple of reasons. Primarily, the amount of student loans you likely have taken out could be as high as a couple hundred thousand dollars...(READ MORE)

What does a typical DI policy cost?

This will obviously depend upon your health, your age, in some instances your occupation or gender. A good rule of thumb, we typically estimate it will cost you approximately 1-2% of your overall income. So essentially with disability insurance, what you are doing is taking about 2% of your income to protect the other 98%...(READ MORE)

How long should I carry disability insurance?

A common practice is to carry the coverage until you are in the position to self insure. If you do a good job of saving money and building assets and get your assets to a point where you can replace your income, then at that point you don’t really need disability insurance anymore...(READ MORE)

The benefits for women

Many major own occupation carriers offer gender neutral pricing while you are in training. What that means is the insurance company will make the male and female rates equal. Once you are working, females will pay typically about 40-50% more in premiums for the exact same policy that their male counterpart will pick up with most companies....(READ MORE)

Common Exclusions

When looking at a policy it is important not to only understand what the policy pays for, but also any reasons the policy WILL NOT pay. Common exclusions might be acts of war, self-inflicted injuries, and injuries while committing a felony—you will see that pretty much across the board with most companies...(READ MORE)

Customizing policies to your specific situation

One of the nice things about a disability policy is you can often customize them to your specific situation. When you look at the variety of differences in carriers and companies, often times your top tier carries will have true own occupation coverage (not available for all professions)...(READ MORE)

How difficult is it to qualify for private DI?

Anyone that looks at private disability insurance should understand that it is not an easy policy to qualify for. Unlike your group disability policy, where you start out at Company X or Firm Y, you show up day one and you get the coverage; there is no medical questions asked, you just sign a form and you have the coverage...(READ MORE)

What can I do if I cannot qualify for DI?

If someone is denied or declined, as can happen (maybe 1 out of 6-8 times), and you are unable to pick-up private disability coverage, you look and see whether your employer or association’s group plan has any type of a conversion capability with it...(READ MORE)

IMPORTANT POLICY FEATURES

The Definition of Disability

One of the most important things to look at when considering disability insurance is the definition of disability. As a trained professional or skilled employee, you have very specific knowledge and we want to make sure that if you are not able to perform the duties of your occupation then you will get compensated...(READ MORE)

Future Purchase Option

The future purchase option on a disability policy is one of the most important options you can build into a policy. Think of this feature as a line of credit. You apply for a certain amount of coverage now, and when your income is higher in the future you then have the ability to increase it significantly...(READ MORE)

Inflation Protection

Many insurance companies give you the option of putting a cost of living or inflation adjustment on a policy. The reason for that is, over time life gets expensive. If you are on a long-term claim, we want to make sure that if you are getting $10K a month in 2015, that it’s not still $10K a month in 2025...(READ MORE)

Catastrophic Rider

One optional rider that is available for disability coverage that we believe is very valuable and cost effective, is what often is referred to as the catastrophic benefit rider. What this benefit does is, for typically very little money, increase the amount of your disability benefit...(READ MORE)

Recovery Benefit

All the good disability companies realize that some occupations are paid on their production. Unlike a salaried employee, if a salaried employee goes out on disability for two years and then come back, they will go right back on salary where their income was before...(READ MORE)

Residual Disability Benefit

The Residual or Partial disability benefit rider comes into play when you are partially disabled. So for instance, you are having back issues and you are unable to stand for an entire day and can only work half days. If your production is cut in half (your income), the residual disability benefit rider will kick in...(READ MORE)

Stacking

This is a common strategy that is used to maximize the amount of disability coverage that you can pick up for higher income professionals. We will often suggest that people do what is called “stacking” disability policies if there is a need for additional benefit above a single company’s issue limits...(READ MORE)

The value proposition of a North Star advisor is that our advisors are unbiased in assisting you in choosing the right disability company among the many we have available. North Star Advisors do not have any “first call” obligation for their business, as can be typical in the insurance industry. There is no career affiliation with “any” disability insurance company. All North Star advisors are legally brokers and not agents of the disability insurance companies we represent. This assures you of the right choice of companies depending on your gender, age, health, profession, specialty, sub-specialty, state of residency, and the many existing institutional discounts we have available. While the use of a North Star advisor is your choice, rest assured that there is no additional cost to you for this.

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