How to avoid becoming an "orphaned" disability policyholder

I work with physicians nationwide, helping them secure their private specialty disability coverage.

And in the insurance world, which I've been in for over 30 years, since I was still in college, it was when I started, they refer to policyholders who no longer have a broker or agent assigned to them as orphaned policyholders.

And that's a powerful term.

To be orphaned means to have lost your parents.

Whoever's in charge or supposed to be guiding you or shepherding you or caring for you, looking after you, accessible to you, and so forth, is not there.

Regardless of the reason, you're on your own.

And that's a scary thought.

When you buy disability insurance, the same thing is true with life insurance.

And I help most clients with life insurance, but all of our clients we help with disability insurance.

So I'm specifically referring to regarding disability.

There has to be an agent or a broker.

So if you call an insurance company directly, One of the top four carriers, Mass Mutual, Guardian, Principal or Emeritus, they're going to send you to me or to a broker or agent that to, quote, help you.

What most people don't understand is that the insurance world is a commission based world where you eat what you kill.

That means that the attrition rate is really high.

is probably, the last I've heard is upwards of 95% of people that start out in the insurance business are no longer in it within three years or five years.

So if you're buying disability insurance and you are talking to someone who has been doing this for five years or less or even 10 years or less, there is a very high probability that in the next 10 years, they won't be doing it.

They'll be doing something else.

They'll go work for the bank.

They're going to have to figure out how to pay some bills.

And it's a difficult way to get started and to hang on long enough to have the persistence and stamina to be able to build it up.

And so Then you throw in the reality that the disability insurance world is quirky.

Even financial advisors and the insurance agents that I know would rather do anything but disability insurance, most of them.

So the people you're talking to is a small number.