Replacing Your Employer-Sponsored Life Insurance: For People with Grave's Disease & Thyroid Disorder

You're looking to get a new and more suitable Insurance plan for your health situation? Your Employer-Provided Life Insurance plan needs an upgrade? -- You're right on time.

While you may know the tricks of managing your overactive thyroid, you may not know how thyroid disorders affect life insurance applications.

Fortunately, when managed well, Grave's disease does not pose a serious concern for life insurance underwriting.

Much like high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, insurers generally will make good offers if the condition is well controlled.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief background on Grave's disease and the information necessary in getting the best deal that you can get with regards to upgrading your Employer Sponsored Life Insurance plan.

Can I Be Approved For Life Insurance With Grave's Disease?

Life insurance with an overactive thyroid condition is certainly possible.

However, you need to keep in mind that the actual nature of the condition, the degree to which you’ve been effectively managing it, and your general state of health is what will determine the policy type and premium rates that you’ll be able to access.

Since underwriting standards vary widely for different policy types, we’ve broken this life insurance review for applicants with Grave’s disease/goiter into 3 separate sections. Just click on the relevant button here to reach the section you need.

What Information Will  Life Insurance Companies Want To Know?

For underwriting your insurance application, the carriers will seek to know more about the symptoms you’ve experienced, treatments undergone, medication utilized, and other follow up reports. The list below will give you a more comprehensive picture:

• Date of your diagnosis
• Age at which you were diagnosed
• Affected body systems
• Treatments you’ve undergone and medications used
• Dates on which you took these treatments
• Follow up reports
• Severity of your condition
• Other important health conditions

Will I Need To Take An Exam For Over Active Thyroid Life Insurance?

To gain access to the best possible rates, a medical examination is a must. A well-controlled thyroid case may help you qualify for policies without any exam. However, bagging the best rates will be possible only if you’ve completed an exam.

The medical exam will be a paramedical examination wherein your urine and blood samples will be collected. A traveling nurse will administer this test after checking with you about the time and place to do this.

But if your needs are best served by a guaranteed issue or simplified issue policy, you don’t need to undergo any examination for this. Check out How Term Life Insurance Works if you’d like to learn more.

How Much Will My Life Insurance Cost And How Exactly Are My Rates Affected By My Thyroid Levels?

Your term insurance rates will be completely influenced by the insurance underwriting class that your application receives. A well-controlled hyperthyroidism case normally tends to receive a standard or better rating. We’ve discussed this issue in greater detail using pricing samples and rating guides. You can also use the following links for guaranteed issue and simplified issue policies to learn more about them.

How Accurate Are The Quotes I Get From Your Quote Tool? 

The quotes generated by our site’s quote tool are based on 100% accurate information that we’ve gathered in our years of experience. But you need to use the correct rate class to obtain the right rate. Online tools are generally used by people who are not always the best judges of their condition and thus normally generate inaccurate results. You can avoid this by simply picking a range of options and receive a reasonable estimate.

Alternatively, you may also use our customized quote form for a one-on-one conversation with us about your needs and options.

How Can I Improve My Underwriting Rating And Lower My Life Insurance Cost?

The best way to score an affordable and benefits-laden insurance policy is by using an agent with access to different companies that are more receptive to applications from people with your condition.

You can also go through Why to use Independent Agent when Shopping for Life Insurance with Grave's Disease  if you want to understand why using an independent agent’s services is your best bet.

What about lifestyle changes, you ask? Adopting a better exercise and diet regimen while limiting your smoking and alcohol consumption habits can help you achieve better results on your blood reports.

Additionally, autoimmune medical conditions like overactive thyroid may mean that you have to document your compliance with doctor’s advice and use medications regularly for a favorable impression. A physician’s letter to this effect will also improve your odds significantly.

By doing these things, you’ll have improved your life insurance rating and health monumentally in a jiffy!

What Are The Best Companies for Life Insurance With Overactive thyroid?

As we’ve repeatedly said here, different insurance companies have different risk appetites, which often get reflected in pricing and underwriting terms. If you have thyroid disorders/Goiter/Grave’s disease, your best bet is to apply for a policy from either Banner, American General, or Prudential, which are the top 3 companies for people with this condition.

However, the only way to get the best deal for sure is by working with an independent agent who has ties to different insurance companies. Our case study below can help you achieve a much better understanding of this reason.

What Is The Application Process For Life Insurance With Thyroid Disorder?

Irrespective of your health conditions, the overall insurance application process happens to be mostly the same. It involves 8 different steps, including picking an insurance carrier, selecting your terms, completing a medical examination, and signing the submitted documents. More information can be obtained here. 

Traditional Term Life Insurance With Grave's/ Goiter / Thyroid Disorder

Although life insurance offers are never table-rated solely due to their thyroid condition, thyroid disorders are also often an indicator of other grave risks. If the condition is severe enough, the insurer may hand out only table rated insurance offers. However, it all depends upon how you present your case and other aspects of your application. The best way to obtain life insurance at affordable rates despite Goiter/Grave’s/Thyroid disorders is by working with an independent agent who knows the ins and outs of the industry.

Obtaining term life insurance with thyroid disorders is actually similar to obtaining life insurance after AFib, Sleep Apnea, heart attack, and many other chronic conditions.

You can purchase term life policies with term lengths between 5 – 30 years. The policies with 20-year terms are the most preferred. Their face value begins at $50,000 with the policies either being renewed at the term-end or being allowed to expire annually. However, it should be noted that renewing them is only available at expensive rates.

Possible Underwriting Ratings With A Thyroid Condition

Since every life insurance application undergoes thorough scrutiny during the underwriting process, it is important to present your story the right way. Not using an independent agent could mean that you may wind up paying vastly more expensive premiums simply because you failed to present your case properly and convince the underwriters of your health status. Based on our experience, we have the following premium pricing scenarios that you may be faced with:

Best Case – In case your thyroid condition has been controlled excellently, you may be assigned a Preferred Plus rating, despite a history of medication usage. You can use our quote tool to obtain a quote. 

Mid Case – People who have their thyroid under control but not as well as the carriers would like, may be assigned standard or better rates, provided they do not suffer from any other medical concerns.

Severe Case – Applicants who are currently undergoing active treatment may be awarded a substandard insurance offer presented in Table 2/B – 4/D, based on how severe your case is.

Pricing For Term Life Insurance with Grave's Disease

Towards the beginning of this review, we mentioned that obtaining life insurance at affordable rates could be done by anyone, even if they had a thyroid issue. However, there’s a major distinction to be made between cheap and affordable. Since life insurance rates get bumped immediately if you have a health condition, the only way to keep premiums affordable is by slashing the term length or the amount of benefits.

Obtaining affordable insurance isn’t simply a matter of narrowing down the cheapest prices and purchasing the policy. There are a multitude of factors that require extensive research before you can make a decision, which can be a time-consuming process. As an easy alternative, you can certainly use the services of an independent agent to overcome these hurdles and get yourself the best possible deal.

Why You Should Use An Independent Agent When Shopping For Life Insurance With High Cholesterol

Even if your situation seems hopeless and you can’t find a way to get a cheaper policy anywhere, that doesn’t mean you’ve run out of all options.

Different companies have different risk appetites for certain conditions. For instance, a condition that automatically downgrades you to substandard rating from one carrier may be treated differently by another carrier, who may assign your application a standard rating.

The only way to find which company works best is by using the services of an agent who is affiliated to multiple companies, instead of sticking purely to a company-affiliated agent. That ensures your agent doesn’t willy-nilly recommend you only policies from a single company – policies that are actually more expensive than other better-priced policies.

Case Study Pricing Policies With Thyroid Disorder (Grave's Disease)

So, I have been preaching about the importance of using an independent Agent and you may think that sounds a little self serving coming from an independent agent.

You are right, it is. However, it is also the undeniable ( and provable) truth.

Please see the case study below . it will show why it is in your interest to have as many options as possible available when shopping for life insurance with Grave's disease or any other impairment.

Gender: Female Age: 29

$1000000 20 Year Term

Tobacco: No

Well controlled mild Grave's Disease. Diagnosed Age 28

Iodine only No Other Health Concerns

This looks like a best case scenario that would be either Preferred, Standard Plus or Standard depending on the insurers appetite for a Graves disease risk.. Let's take a look at the rates.

You can find more information about the premiums charged by major insurance companies at different categories from the table above. At the preferred category, Prudential appears to be 29% costlier compared to SBLI.

But is that all there is? As a matter of fact, no. While SBLI may seem like the best choice, it is only so for people who are assigned a standard rating by both companies. In reality though, SBLI has more stringent acceptance conditions for its standard category compared to Prudential, which has relatively lax standards. This means that though SBLI’s premiums are cheaper, you may find that you’ll only qualify for Prudential’s standard category.

This is a highly complex issue that will require a lot of time and energy on your part to sort out. You will have to set aside a considerable amount of time to find out which insurance company offers the best value-for-money policy. Unfortunately, most of us simply do not have that kind of time lying around, which is where an independent insurance agent comes in. They will take a quick look at your application and immediately explain which company will provide you with the best rates and benefits. Since they’re not affiliated with any company specifically, they’ll be more than happy to guide you to the cheapest variant, thus resulting in a win-win for everyone involved.

Take a look at Prudential @ Preferred & AIG @ Standard – the difference is around 17%. That’s how much you can gain if you chose the services of an independent agent instead of someone who is solely affiliated to AIG. An independent agent can bring you deals that a company affiliated agent simply does not have the financial incentive to reveal, which is why it’s always best to go with the former.

Next Step

We are glad you did the necessary due diligence to check out for a better upgrade of your Employer Sponsored Life Insurance Plan and finally decided on Workers Bequest. We are committed to a totally transparent process (we'll even share our computer screen with you if you'd like), and making the application process as painless as possible.

Simply give us a call or shoot an email over and we can get you started. If you have any questions, We'd also like to hear them.

Fast Facts About Grave's Disease