Don’t Convert Your Company Life Insurance to A Personal Insurance Policy When You Leave s Company
Posted on November 2nd, 2008 by admin
When your company offers you a health insurance policy as a company benefit, a nonoptional life insurance policy is normally included in the package. Including life insurance is one way an insurance company can add almost guaranteed profits since the mortality rate, or number of insured that will die each year in any large group of people covered by life insurance, is fairly predictable. Total payments of doctor and hospital claims for the same group of insured people, however, are not predictable. The amount of insurance can range from $5,000 to $50,000. Often managers or executives are covered with up to $50,000 of life insurance as a company benefit since the company-paid premiums are not taxable to the insured on up to that amount of coverage.
If you are like the average employee who changes jobs seven times during a working career, chances are you will be faced with hidden health and life insurance decisions when you leave a job. By federal law, whenever you leave a company with 20 or more employees,
whether your departure is voluntary or you are terminated, you must be given the option of converting your company health insurance policy, including the life insurance, from a company to a personal policy for up to 18 months. The difference is that when it becomes a personal, not a group policy, your rates go up astronomically, and your company stops paying any of the premiums unless you had something in your employment contract to the contrary. One of the best ways to cut these huge personal health premiums is to drop the unnecessary or poor-value coverages, like the life insurance. When you convert a policy, the only reason you should consider keeping the life insurance is if you are in poor health or otherwise uninsurable.
The overpriced life insurance should be dropped for two important reasons. First, the life insurance usually goes from term insurance into very expensive whole life insurance on the personal policy. By keeping it you would be violating one of the important strategies discussed earlier—never buy low-benefit, high-priced whole life. Since most people never read the health insurance conversion terms, but only gasp at the new premiums, this insurance company gimmick goes unnoticed! You are paying whole life rates, but the insurance company knows you will probably drop the policy within a year, losing all the premiums, including cash values.
Second, you want only one life insurance policy on yourself and at the lowest possible term rates—one policy whose face value is enough to cover everything from loss of income to the payoff of your mortgage or other debts, as determined by you. Following the strategies in this chapter will help you obtain that one optimum policy.