Speak with an experienced advisor! Many individuals who suffer from chronic illnesses, such as lupus, mistakenly believe that they are not candidates for life insurance. Admittedly, there are heightened concerns from underwriters in extending life insurance to someone with lupus, however, this IS an insurable condition! What is important as an applicant is gain full understanding of how life insurance carriers will view and critically-evaluate your health and risk. This post is designed to help shed some light on what underwriters are looking for when considering an applicant with lupus for life insurance.
Lupus is a disease that has multi-system manifestations and presentations from one individual to another can be very diverse. As such, it is important to clearly articulate to your agent or company exactly how the disease is impacting you. Don’t describe your illness in generalities as you may be setting yourself up for failure. For example, the underwriter may have just denied an individual with very challenging lupus health issues and is biased in that regard. If your condition tends to be more mild on the continuum of severity, these biases may work against you in securing your approval.
One of the principle differentiators among outcomes for individuals with lupus is how frequently they monitor their health. The more often they are communicating with their physicians the healthier they tend to be. These regular visits and checkups also keep them in tune with their disease so that they can be aware of when their flare-ups are coming, giving them opportunities to head them off, or at the very least, put them in a position where they can perhaps mitigate their severity. It is critical that you document your office visits, other checkups, flare-ups, blood pressure checks, etc. What you will notice when you have this documentation is the emergence of patterns. Underwriters like predictability and if you can demonstrate that you are in control and managing your disease effectively, you begin to transform into less of a risk for the carrier.
Specifically, the underwriter is going to be interested in the following information:
- Your age at diagnosis and how long you have had the condition
- The specific type of lupus you have (discoid, systemic)
- What areas of your body have been impacted by the disease?
- What medications are you taking and what are the doses? Have they changed over time?
- When was the last time you were treated for lupus? (this is where your documentation and demonstrating your vigilence in tracking your disease are important.)
- Any patterns of remission and recurrence (ie. flares).
Positioning yourself for life insurance “success” starts with you taking care of your health. In addition to frequent medical consultations, begin controlling any unhealthy habits that may be present such as smoking, alcohol use, and weight-gain. Get yourself on a regular activity regimen as this will help physically, but also contribute to bettering your emotional and psychological health. Long story short: stay tuned up!
You must also be very judicious in your selection of the insurance company to which you will submit an application. How do you make this decision? Firstly, recognize that not all insurance companies are created equal! They all have different underwriting criteria and some are more “high risk”-friendly than others. This is precisely where an independent agent can assist. We recommend finding an established agent that specializes in “high-risk” cases and has numerous, deep relationships with life insurance companies. This is important as a number of companies will deny your case outright, but if there are standing relationships between agents and underwriters, you can use leverage these relationships to increase the likelihood that your application is approved. At its core, this is ultimately a numbers game and the more experienced and connected your independent agent, the better your odds of winning!
At lupuslifeinsurance.com, we pride ourselves on the personal relationships we possess with underwriters at organizations that tend to write policies for individuals with lupus. It is these relationships, coupled with the personal attention and service to our clients, that is most beneficial in your quest of securing a life insurance policy with lupus.
In fact, a large majority of our clients with lupus have been able to secure life insurance because of the way we “package” and “present” them to our life insurance partners. Specifically, we learn about our clients, their lifestyles, their goals, careers, familiy, etc. to draft agent reports, submitted alongside each application, that most accurately characterize the applicant and how they live in spite of having lupus. These applicant “portraits” bridge the gap between insurance company and applicant, transforming them from a sterile statistic into a multi-dimensional human being. It is this humanistic approach that has allowed us to help most of our applicants secure the needed protection that life insurance brings.
We hope this was helpful in giving you an overall picture of what will assist you as you seek life insurance with lupus.
Contact lupuslifeinsurance.com by email at info@lupuslifeinsurance.com or by phone at 877.574.9920 for a free no-commitment consultation.
