Cover Your Assets Podcast with Billy Gwaltney
Jun 10, 2026 · 5 min · 3 segments
In this of Cover Your Assets, host Billy Gwaltney clarifies how disability insurance rates are determined, why they vary between brokers, and how to ensure you're getting the best coverage without…
Billy GwaltneyHostNo entities detected.
I work with physicians across the country, helping them secure their private specialty coverage.
And she asked, if rates are the same with all carriers, if rates are fixed, discounts are fixed, then why do rates vary so much between broker, from broker to broker? And that's a really good question.
Disability insurance, when you're looking at your private specialty coverage and you're exploring the options, it's not like real estate where The rate on Monday is different than the rate next Monday, depending on market conditions or what have you.
So the broker, it's not like you can get a lower rate if you don't work with a broker.
If you are truly comparing apples to apples between brokers, then the rate would be the same to the penny.
OK, if it is different than something in the coverage or contract is different.
So when I send rates to clients, whether they are residents, fellows or attendings, contractually speaking, they contain the maximum discounts and there's no way to get it any cheaper without having less coverage, cutting corners in the definitions where you don't have the true specialty definition or the residual benefit or the recovery benefit or which are deal killers to any good policy.
One of the carriers, Guardian, offers a graded or increasing premium, not benefit, but premium, where the premium starts off pretty cheap, but it increases every year, and you will ultimately switch to a level rate that will be higher than it would have been had you started at the level rate to begin with.
So it's a little bit of savings in the beginning in exchange for paying a lot more over the course of your career if you keep the policy for your career, which most of our clients do.
I saw a client this week, she sent me quotes from another broker and the rates that she had were about 30% higher than the rates I was showing her.
She was like, what is the deal? And so she sent me the quote and I said, well, they have this fluff rider on there.
And so you put those things together and that equates to a significantly higher rate.
I work with physicians across the country, helping them secure their private specialty coverage.
And she asked, if rates are the same with all carriers, if rates are fixed, discounts are fixed, then why do rates vary so much between broker, from broker to broker? And that's a really good question.
Disability insurance, when you're looking at your private specialty coverage and you're exploring the options, it's not like real estate where The rate on Monday is different than the rate next Monday, depending on market conditions or what have you.
So the broker, it's not like you can get a lower rate if you don't work with a broker.
If you are truly comparing apples to apples between brokers, then the rate would be the same to the penny.
OK, if it is different than something in the coverage or contract is different.
So when I send rates to clients, whether they are residents, fellows or attendings, contractually speaking, they contain the maximum discounts and there's no way to get it any cheaper without having less coverage, cutting corners in the definitions where you don't have the true specialty definition or the residual benefit or the recovery benefit or which are deal killers to any good policy.
One of the carriers, Guardian, offers a graded or increasing premium, not benefit, but premium, where the premium starts off pretty cheap, but it increases every year, and you will ultimately switch to a level rate that will be higher than it would have been had you started at the level rate to begin with.
So it's a little bit of savings in the beginning in exchange for paying a lot more over the course of your career if you keep the policy for your career, which most of our clients do.
I saw a client this week, she sent me quotes from another broker and the rates that she had were about 30% higher than the rates I was showing her.
She was like, what is the deal? And so she sent me the quote and I said, well, they have this fluff rider on there.
And so you put those things together and that equates to a significantly higher rate.
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