Types of Disability Insurance

(Individual, Association, & Group Plans)

Individual Policies Offer Superior Benefits and True Income Protection

Individual disability policies provide comprehensive coverage that group and association plans simply cannot match.

The Individual policies we design are non-cancellable and guaranteed renewable, meaning:

  1. your premiums are locked in and can never increase
  2. your coverage cannot be cancelled as long as you pay premiums
  3. and your policy provisions cannot be changed

Excellent individual disability insurance policies offer robust partial or residual disability benefits that pay you a percentage of your total benefit if you can only work part-time or at reduced capacity—and critically, these benefits don’t require a period of total disability first. Individual policies also include recovery benefits that continue payments while you transition back to your full earning capacity because most recoveries from illness or injury don’t occur overnight.

We find it important to help our clients think about individual income protection alongside association and group disability plans, which they may be more familiar with or be offered by their employer.

Association plans can sometimes be useful as supplemental coverage. They have:

  1. premiums that can increase
  2. policy provisions that can change
  3. and they typically require total disability before partial benefits kick in

The uncertain nature of these policies and their restrictive provisions make them unsuitable as your primary income protection.

Group policies should similarly only supplement, never replace, your individual coverage. Group policies are also subject to ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974). This basically means if your benefits are denied, you must exhaust an administrative appeals process before you can seek a legal remedy. Furthermore, if the insurance company loses in court, it is only required to pay what it would have paid for the claim originally. The bottom line: if you’re serious about protecting your ability to practice your medical specialty, individual disability insurance with true own occupation, specialty-specific language is the only coverage that truly protects the medical career you’ve spent years building.

Physicians are our specialty.

Disability Insurance custom-designed for physicians, by specialists with decades of experience advising medical professionals.