What is the Major Feature I Should Have?

We advise every consultant to include one thing on their disability insurance policy. The Enhanced Partial Disability Benefit Rider allows you to receive benefits until you recover financially, not just physically recovering from a disability claim.

Recovery Benefits are Critical for Consultants

If you've been a consultant for over a few months, you know how hard it was to build your business. Getting the contracts with clients that have made you successful takes time and effort. A sickness or injury can derail those contracts and eliminate your income. How long do you think it will take to rebuild your business when you recover from that sickness or injury (and many people do)? Will the 50-year-old you have the same energy to pursue those same opportunities as the 30-year-old you did? Just because you're working full-time again as a consultant doesn't mean your income will bounce back. 

Many disability insurance policies wouldn't consider you disabled in this situation, and it's possible that no benefits would be paid. Guardian's Provider Choice Premier policy has an optional provision that fixes this problem. The Enhanced Partial Disability Benefit Rider, which we recommend for all consultants, does not require you to have a loss of time or duties at your job to continue receiving benefits. All that is needed is a 15% loss of income solely due to a qualifying sickness or injury. Thus, it allows you to continue receiving a monthly benefit while working full-time to rebuild your business and recover financially, not just medically.

Special Programs for New Consultants

Many consultants come from salaried positions with stable incomes. They know they can make more money as independent business owners and enjoy all the benefits of being their own boss. The challenge is that they don't know exactly what their income will be in the first year or two. This makes it difficult for some companies to provide a disability insurance policy to protect that unknown income. Many companies require new consultant business owners to provide a full year of tax returns before they will consider them.

Guardian has a special underwriting program tailored to new business owners in this situation. Startup Savy Underwriting allows Guardian to consider 50% of your prior salaried income in determining how much disability insurance you may qualify for. If you're between the ages of 30-50 and have at least five years of experience in your industry, you do not need a full year of taxes to buy a disability insurance policy up to $5,000 per month.

This Startup Savy underwriting program allows you to buy a policy sooner than you can with many other carriers. When we add the optional future increase option rider to your policy, you can buy more disability insurance as your income increases without any more medical underwriting questions. Using Startup Savy underwriting in conjunction with the future increase option rider is an excellent way for new consultants to buy a disability insurance policy and have it grow with them throughout their careers.