How to find the best life insurance rates with heart disease?
Individuals with heart disease that need life insurance need to know one important secret. It is essential that they work with an expert agent that is a specialist in placing coverage for those with a history of cardiovascular disease.
You see the art of placing coverage on the high risk prospect often lies with the experience of your agent. This article will discuss ways that the special risk agent can save you time in locating the legitimate companies for this type of coverage. It will also discuss how your agent can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of your policy.
The special risk life insurance agent
Most life insurance agents have no problem finding affordable coverage for someone with a clean medical history. It’s as simple as finding the lowest rate and advising the prospect. Heck, with the internet nowadays a customer can simply go online, enter their information and get rates from dozens of companies.
But, what happens if the person needing life insurance has some medical history in their background? This can sometimes make finding the most affordable coverage challenging unless you use a bona-fide special risk life agent.
The special risk life insurance agent is typically an independent agent with contracts from multiple carriers. They typically will have been in the business for many years, and have lots of experience working with cases involving heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, etc.
You see, many non-experienced life insurance agents do not know the right questions to ask, or what carriers handle certain high risk medical cases. In fact, the inexperienced agent can actually keep you from finding the best policy available if they are not careful.
What are the right questions to ask?
When searching for life insurance with heart disease your agent should be able to discuss with you the actual type of heart disease you have.
Have you had a heart attack? Heart by-pass surgery? Congestive heart failure?
With any of the cardiovascular conditions, the underwriter from the life insurance company will need to know certain information. It is up to your agent to gather this information and present it to the different carriers for their review. Below are just a few of the questions they a special risk life agent would ask:
- Date of Birth?
- What type of heart disease do you have?
- When was the disease first discovered?
- Have you required any type of surgery such as bypass, angioplasty, stent placement, etc.?
- Have you had any symptoms since your surgery such as chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, etc.
- Have you had any follow-up tests such as EKG’s, stress test, echo cardiograms, etc?
- What current medications are you taking?
- Do you use tobacco?
- Do you currently engage in any type of exercise?
- Any family history of heart disease?
- How often do you see your cardiologists?
These are just some of the questions your agent should be asking you regarding your situation.
Finding the companies that specialize in life insurance with heart disease
Once your agent has gathered up the information regarding your heart disease, the real work begins. The agent will search out the companies that typically do the best job in underwriting your particular risk. How your agent actually searches for the best coverage can often times save you lots of time and money. Let’s look at typical example of a case from start to finish:
CASE STUDY–
Joe is a 53 year old business owner who needs to secure $1 million of term life insurance protection for his family. Joe is concerned that he may not be able to find affordable coverage due to his history of high blood pressure and coronary by-pass surgery. Joe had by-pass surgery 3 years ago.
Joe calls down to his local agency who insures his home and auto coverage and discusses his need for life insurance. The agent who Joe speaks to represents one of the largest property-casualty companies in the world. Joe’s agent listens to his medical history and decides to have Joe fill out an application and schedule him for a medical exam.
After about 3 weeks the P&C agent calls Joe to give him some bad news. Unfortunately, the P&C carrier has declined Joe for coverage. Joe’s agent tells him apparently the carrier is not to fond of taking a risk on someone with a medical history such as Joe’s.
Joe’s P&C agent is a captive agent and only represents the one carrier. He has no other options for Joe and tells him he is sorry he could not help.
Joe is frustrated about not being able to secure coverage for his family. Joe goes online to attempt to gather quotes from a big name online insurance company. The online agent sends Joe paperwork to complete and schedules him for another medical exam. Joe is desperate to get coverage so he completes the paperwork and has another insurance exam completed.
About 3 weeks later Joe gets the new that he has again been declined for life insurance coverage. The letter from the online company simply states the carriers can not make an offer due to heart history.
Joe is about to give up on trying to obtain coverage when he runs into a buddy of his at the post office. Joe explains his frustration with not being able to secure life insurance to his friend. His friend states that he recently secured life insurance even though he also had a medical history of diabetes, sleep apnea and kidney disease. Joe’s friend refers him to his agent who specializes in coverage for individuals with pre-existing medical conditions.
Joe meets with Mike the special risk life agent and explains what has happened over the last few months. Mike gathers up detailed information on Joe’s medical history and get’s to work on finding out if coverage is available.
The correct way to find an offer on someone with heart disease
Mike is an experienced special risk life agent. He knows from experience the 5 or 6 life insurance carriers that favor individuals with a history of heart disease.
Mike calls each company on the phone and explains the medical history, tests that have been completed, medications, etc. He does not take applications for any company until each company gives him a tentative quote for coverage.
A couple of the insurance carrier advise Mike that they have run an MIB (medical information bureau) report on Joe and see that he has been declined multiple times for coverage.
Mike is worried that the MIB report could scare a couple of his companies off from making an offer. TIP-(You see life insurance companies do not like paying for the expense of underwriting a policy if you are applying for coverage all over town). This is the mistake of not using an experienced agent like Mike.
Mike meets with Joe to discuss the offers from each of the insurance carriers. Mike tells Joe that he has offers from 5 different insurance companies.
Mike and Joe review all the offers and decide that the lowest rates are being offered by Prudential Life Insurance Company. Joe submits a formal application to Prudential and completes an insurance exam.
After about 4 weeks Mike presents Joe with an approved $1 million life insurance policy from Prudential at an affordable rate. Needless to say Joe is excited to be have this protection.
Moral of the story
Joe unfortunately wasted lots of time and patience with agents who were not experienced in dealing with someone that had a history of heart disease. Using the correct agent allowed Joe to not only shop the marketplace for the best provider, but also the best price. The special risk life insurance agent can be your best friend when looking for life insurance with heart disease.
Conclusion-
If you are in need of life insurance for business planning, final expense planning or perhaps an income protection policy and have a history of heart disease or any pre-exiting medical condition, please give us a call at 1-888-393-9003 or contact us at mike@specialriskterm.com
