Say you’re a professional football player and you get injured. You can no longer play your sport at a high level, but you can have a successful career doing something else.
The salary differential: around $ 1 million a year versus maybe $ 75,000. Plus, you no longer qualify for disability insurance because there’s something else you can do for a living. NFL players in particular have short careers — an average of around three seasons — as injuries and grueling competition take their toll. The Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin suffered a high-profile injury last week, and while he will be earning his full $ 825,000 this season, his future is in doubt.
The same is true for action-movie heroes, CEOs, surgeons, dentists — high-paying jobs that require specialized skills.
Financial adviser Jen Grant of Perryman Financial Advisory in Dallas had such a client, a dentist who had something called “own-occupation” disability insurance that covered his salary while he recovered from an injury and figured out a new career path.
“He was very grateful, because he was able to pivot and build a new career as a teacher and consultant while still receiving disability pay,” Grant says.
Only 20% of workers have any kind of disability insurance policy, according to LIMRA, a life-insurance trade group, despite the fact that 40% of employers offer group policies. The average 20-year-old has a 25% chance of needing disability insurance at some point before they retire.
Own-occupation disability insurance is not the standard that comes with employer-sponsored policies — the kind you check mark during open enrollment and immediately forget about. Most policies cover merely “any occupation” at 60% of salary and stop coverage if you get another kind of job. Because it requires extra steps and added expense to seek out own-occupation policies, few have this enhanced coverage, even those at high risk.
“If an injury or illness could make you unable to perform the substantial duties of your own occupation but might not prevent you from practicing any occupation, you’ll want to have an own-occupation policy,” says Loretta Worters, vice president of media relations for the Insurance Information Institute.
What it costs
Specialty high-earners like football players and actors often get standard policies and then turn to specialized insurance providers to add additional coverage.
“It’s a very niche market,” says Frank Zuccarello, a partner at Exceptional Risk Advisors, based in Mahwah, N.J., which works with Lloyd’s of London on policies. “We basically work through business managers, agents or financial advisers to educate people about the need for disability insurance, and to insure their livelihood like they would their houses.”
Policies are crafted for each individual, based on their income and risks.
“If you have a football player with a three-year contract for $ 20 million, we try to come up with a policy that covers the taxable amount in case that person becomes disabled and never signs future contracts,” says Zuccarello.
Jeremy Renner’s recent snowplow accident is one example of a situation that could befall an entertainer. Some of Zuccarello’s entertainment clients have had voice problems and could no longer perform. Some needed to stop working because of cancer treatment. One fell and broke a hip. Mental health and substance abuse are typically not covered as qualifying perils, Zuccarello notes.
The cost generally works out to be less than 1% of earnings, so on $ 1 million, it might be $ 6,000 or $ 7,000 a year, Zuccarello says. Entertainers usually have a 90-day elimination period, during which they have to pay all their expenses until the policy starts, whereas that period is more like one year for athletes. Benefits can last a range of years, depending on the age of the person and how much they’re willing to pay.
For regular professions, costs vary greatly based on the duties involved, the age of the person, where they live and their gender. Jobs that involve manual dexterity, like some medical professions, are especially at risk. And “women pay higher rates than men, all else being equal, which is the opposite of life insurance,” says Jim Coyle, a brokerage sales manager for The DI Center in Allen, Texas, because they are at higher risk of disability.
According to estimates generated by Coyle, a 40-year-old female architect earning $ 200,000 could expect to pay $ 390 a month for an “own occupation and not working elsewhere” policy that would provide a $ 9,700-a-month benefit, while a male architect would pay $ 270. On the other hand, a dentist of the same age and salary would pay $ 650 if female and $ 450 if male.
A 50-year-old lawyer making $ 500,000 could get an $ 18,000-a-month benefit and expect to pay $ 790 a month if female and $ 660 if male.
“Dentists do a lot of stooping, leaning and performing procedures at difficult angles. They have high rates of disability — anecdotally, there seem to be many back and neck issues,” says Coyle. Meanwhile, architects and lawyers are lower risk, because they spend more time sitting at desks.
Now for a cautionary tale
When Frank Summers, 53, was starting out in his career, he had a medical issue and couldn’t work for a year. Bills were piling up, so he didn’t listen when doctors told him to go back to work only part-time. He reinjured himself and ended up back on disability. He racked up about $ 30,000 in debt and spent years paying it off.
Now a financial adviser based in Charlotte, N.C., Summers tells this story to clients when he’s looking over their insurance coverage and trying to educate them about the need to get own-occupation coverage.
Does he have it for himself?
“Oh, yes. Are you kidding? When that bill comes every month, I write a check, and I go right back to the mailbox to send it out,” he says.
Summers has actually been covered for this risk for some time and pays only about $ 700 a year because he has had the policy for so long, he says. He thinks anyone who relies on their own salary for their living expenses, not just high-income professionals, should be in the market for this kind of coverage.
“It’s a relatively small addition to the cost of overall coverage. But the more specialized, the more it becomes an important thing,” he adds.
Some clients shy away from thinking about disability at all and don’t like sales pitches, so Summers’s most persuasive argument is to send them back to their employers to ask what their included disability benefit actually covers. When people see what they’d get without the own-occupation designation, which often means they’d be faced with a lot of caveats and limits on benefits, they typically sign up for the extra coverage.
“A big part is just understanding,” says Summers.
Got a question about the mechanics of investing, how it fits into your overall financial plan and what strategies can help you make the most out of your money? You can write me at beth.pinsker@marketwatch.com.