Insurability And The Work Place Advantage

Insurability is a critically important insurance concept.  Employers are sometimes hesitant to provide employee benefits if they perceive their workforce as being made up of younger and healthier workers who are less concerned about insurance. 

Practically speaking however, the best time to secure coverage is in fact when you are young and healthy.  If you’re young, healthy and have a good family health history, your insurability is at its peak and you’ll be rewarded with the best rates on life, health and disability insurance.  

As you age and your health declines, you become less insurable.  A major health crisis could render you completely uninsurable for certain types of insurance coverages.  A disability policy offered through the workplace can help otherwise uninsurable employees gain coverage.  Through our strong carrier partnerships, we are able to offer plans with lessened or waived underwriting requirements. 

As a benefit communications, enrollment and voluntary benefits provider, we begin by helping you design a benefits package that will be well rounded enough to provide true options for your employees.  During the enrollment event, we help employees understand the options they are being offered, and help them select plans that will work well together to maximize the dollars spent.  After the enrollment, we follow up to ensure the needs of the employer and the employees were met.  We also provide ongoing support for new hires throughout the year.

Contact us and give your employees access to smart benefits that help them prepare for their tomorrow today!

A Disability Insurance Story

Meredith Moore

A former NCAA Division I college swimmer and dedicated triathlete, Meredith Moore was the portrait of good health and fitness at age 30.  But just weeks after giving birth to her first child, Erik, she began suffering from headaches so strong they reduced her to tears.
A series of doctor visits culminated in a CAT scan that revealed the cause:
A malignant, fist-sized brain tumor called a glioblastoma multiforme that is almost always fatal.


Though unable to work for a year, Meredith’s disability insurance replaced 60% of her income, ensuring her illness would not add a financial burden to the challenges that she and her husband, Keith, already faced. 
What followed was an aggressive treatment strategy that included three brain surgeries, a seven-week chemotherapy regimen at Duke University’s renowned brain tumor center and more chemotherapy at home in Alpharetta, Ga.

Meredith with son Erik

Fortunately Meredith, an insurance agent, knew exactly what to do when she was in her twenties.  She had purchased as much disability, life and long-term care insurance as she could.


Told she would be lucky to live for one year, Meredith has now been cancer-free for more than two.  She has even returned to work part time, with a partial disability benefit supplementing the income she now earns.  Most remarkably, she’s once again competing in triathlons.  


Meredith knows a recurrence of her cancer is more a matter of “when” than “if.”  But she’s determined to make the most of her new lease on life, both in her personal relationships and her professional ones.  “I really push my clients to plan and put things in place now because I know personally that bad things can happen,” she says.


Perhaps it was Meredith’s profession that helped her understand the critical role that insurance can play in financial planning.  For the vast majority of employees, such presence of mind may not naturally take place.  That is part of our core mission at Complete Benefit Solutions.  As an benefit communications, enrollment, and voluntary benefits provider, we help employees maximize their benefit dollars for a better tomorrow.


Contact us today for assistance in providing that same planning and stability to your employees.  Our Benefit Counselors play a critical role in helping employees gauge the right amount of coverage, based on their actual needs and budget requirements.

Why Disability Insurance Through The Workplace

Last week we talked about disability insurance as being insurance for paychecks.  Disability is an unpredictable event and it has a tremendously negative impact financially.  After the limited paid personal leave time and even more limited personal savings of most individuals and families, things can get very tough financially.

As an employer, one of the most valuable benefits you can provide to your employees is disability insurance.  Our employee benefit solutions include disability insurance and discount plans aimed at helping employees protect their income.  Additionally, we offer the following built in benefits:

 ü Ease of underwriting – makes it easier for employees to obtain coverage

ü  Payroll Deducted – easy to build into the budget

ü  Portability – employees can take their coverage with them if their employment changes

Disability insurance can be offered on a voluntary basis or with an employer funded benefit bank.  Coverage is available for up to 66 and 2/3^rd of their monthly income and we can customize how the coverage is offered. 

During the enrollment process, a benefits counselor assists each employee in selecting a plan based on their monthly income, expenses, available savings, paid leave time, and other available resources.  Our 1 to 1 benefits counseling method allows each employee access to a dedicated professional who can help them analyze their specific needs.  As a result, they purchase only based on their individual needs.

This benefit can be offered at no cost to the employer.  If you would like to learn more about our different approach to employee benefits, let us know.  Our approach is based on providing real value through benefits that help both the employer and its employees.  

The Most Important Thing to Insure

A recent graduate, Darien Smith had began working at a local home improvement store while attending a community college in Miami.  During a regular shift at work, he accidentally fell and hit his head.  Two weeks later, he was accidentally struck in the head by another employee moving stock around.  The injuries from these two incidents left him paralyzed from the neck down.  At age 19, he became a ventilator dependent quadriplegic - permanently disabled due to injuries suffered on the job.

Injuries on the job, even those less severe than Darien's, force three out ten Americans into disability before retirement.  And once disabled, the ability to earn a living can disappear altogether, adding another layer of devastation to the family.  But disabilities don't just occur on the job however.  Accidents and injuries can happen anywhere and when serious enough to result in disability, even for just a few months, the loss of income earning ability can derail a family financially.

Disability insurance is insurance for your paycheck.  It provides specific payments directly to you if you become disabled whether for a short or long period of time.  The coverage is available whether the disability resulted from injuries suffered on or off the job.  It can also cover spouses under similar terms.  The payments from a disability policy help offset your loss of income from not being able to work.

Have you and your family discussed how you would cope financially with a period of disability?  How would you continue to meet the family's living expenses?  The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) suggests a simple starting point to planning for the unthinkable:

1. What are your necessary monthly living expenses?  These are often fixed costs such as rent or mortgage, utilities, food, medical insurance.
2. Can your savings carry you for one month?  three? six months or longer if necessary?

Answering these two questions will help you begin the planning process.  You can also visit the CDA's website for additional resources and tools at www.disabilitycanhappen.org.  Simple planning today can help you put a few dollars a week away, to ensure that you and your family could continue to meet regular living expenses after disability.