To Your Health

With September being Life Insurance and Healthy Aging Month, it seemed the perfect opportunity to bring awareness to how your health and habits can positively impact your life insurance premiums. While wellness programs in companies have proven their value in reducing health insurance premiums, does the same hold true for gaining a better life insurance premium? The answer is, “Yes!”
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An article in Corporate Wellness magazine affirms that life insurance is very much a corollary to health insurance because both instruments offer financial security against a potentially devastating chronic medical condition or incurable illness. However, wouldn’t it be even better for the life insurance to be an instrument for benefiting your heirs instead of covering the costs of poor health after you are gone?

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According to a study conducted by LIMRA, wellness is a chance for life insurers to improve their performance by doing something good for its customers. Companies that have embraced this concept include elements such as healthy activity tracking, preventative health, medical records, and genetic tests to monitor and reward policy holders. When determining to choose a life insurance policy, it may be in your best interests to find out which ones are onboard for rewarding its policy holders for taking care of themselves. 

A Conversion Advantage

When a client who was 38 years old and in great health purchased a term insurance policy, he wanted to include a healthy engagement rider called vitality which helped him save money on his premiums by making beneficial health decisions. He was healthy at the time of purchase and considered a preferred underwriting status, helping him receive the highest possible savings. When he purchased his $5 million policy, he intended that someday he would want to have permanent life insurance, but determined he only needed the term policy at the time. With this in mind, the term policy selected included the ability to convert to a permanent policy in the future. 

Fast-forward three years and he wanted to purchase $3 Million of permanent life insurance. Over that time period, he had been diagnosed with a health condition that would no longer qualify him for preferred underwriting status. With this new health development, it made purchasing a new permanent policy much more expensive. The good news was that the term policy he purchased was still in its convertibility period and had the preferred underwriting status. Through what is known as a partial conversion, we converted $3 million of the $5 million term policy that still had Preferred underwriting, leveraging it into the desired permanent policy. If he had needed to buy new insurance outright, it would have been significantly more expensive due to his new health condition. Additionally, the recommended policy had a healthy living rider, which rewards healthy decisions and preventative care through perks and insurance savings. He finds this rider motivational for maintaining the highest possible level of insurance savings.
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To learn more about his policy’s wellness program, Vitality, CLICK HERE.

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5 Key Questions – Your Vitality Matters

1. Has your health changed? Has it improved? If your health has changed in a negative way, determine if a wellness program could reverse the trend. If your health has improved, there might be better pricing for you for a life insurance policy. A positive change in your health since you initially purchased your policy, might qualify you for a better underwriting class. 
2. Do you have a Term policy and would like Permanent? If you want to convert your term policy to a permanent policy, first find out how long ago it was purchased, and then confirm the term end date to better understand your options. Typically, the term is age-based, so once you know the age limit of the term policy, you can then explore your options for converting it to a permanent whole life policy. 
3. Has your prescription drug usage changed? If you have reduced dosages or eliminated a medication altogether, it may be time to update your policy with this information. Especially specific types of medicines that were originally on record when you purchased a policy treating blood pressure or cholesterol, if they are no longer necessary due to your health improving, be sure to have this updated and reconsidered. While it may take a full year before it can translate into savings to ensure it is a true health change for the better, it is worth investigating. 
4. Do you have diabetes? If so, there are special wellness programs available to consider, so you don’t have to feel that being diagnosed prohibits you from a life insurance policy. Investopedia has rated life insurance policies for diabetes patients based on wellness perks, Type 1 or Type 2, whether you have a complicated medical history, or ease in qualifying. 
5. Do you exercise, eat healthy and have tried to make a positive impact on your life? If so, there might be discounts. If weight loss was your goal, you may need to wait to show the loss has been sustained over a year’s timeframe before an insurer will reconsider your policy premium. To learn more about life insurance rate reconsideration, read this article in Forbes.

No matter your state of health, a life insurance policy brings peace of mind in preparing you for the unexpected. The fact that life insurance companies are now seeing the value of rewarding your health makes it an even better choice.

For Your Future, 
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Lori Capozza Zeind
www.lczconsulting.com

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