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March 14, 2013 at 09:04 AM
I have been in the insurance business more than 30 years.
In the early days of my career, the company that I worked for as a representative (it was one of the major players in the DI business at that time) actually paid their claims out of their respective branch offices.
If there was a question about the validity of the claim—not often—then the home office would send its own claim investigator to validate the claim.
Do I believe in disability insurance? Yes, I believe it (along with life insurance) to be the most overlooked and most important insurance for a young working person.
In the first week of my career, I went out with a producer who had a 37-year-old client making $375,000—a very nice income for someone in the 1970s.
The client was an orthodontist in an affluent suburb of Minneapolis. Seven months later, he was removing snow from his roof, slipped and fell off, and suffered a career-ending wrist injury.
This story did have a happy ending. While the client received around $8,000 per month from his insurance policy (compounding at a much higher interest rate that is being offered today), he later became a founding partner of a medical services company where he made millions.
His disability income policy also paid him a couple of million dollars.
All disability claims do not have this type of nice ending, but this client’s policy allowed him to change gears after years of education and training for a specific profession and to transition into a successful business career.
The most memorable claim that I was a small part of was a divorced 45-year St. Paul school teacher.
She did not have group long-term disability (LTD) through her school district .
