148. ​​Will My Life Insurance Policy Pay Out A Death Claim? The Incontestability Period

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay Street Podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.

Have you ever wondered if the life insurance company will pay out a death claim? Well, this question has been keeping some people up at night and we're going to go over a bit of a conversation today to learn a little bit about how the life insurance company looks at processing death claims and what is an area that is a little bit less known or understood in regards to something called the contestability period. So I'm joined again today, of course, by my co host, Jason Lowe, and we are going to dig into this fun and engaging topic all about death claims.

And we will say that and, and it would be appropriate for us to say we're not speaking on behalf of any life insurance companies in Canada or in the United States. We're not claim adjudicators. We are sharing with you what we're required to share as life licensed, you know, advisors and just based on experience, experiences that we've had over the years, you know, these past 15 years. And because it is, it is, especially with COVID right, There's, there's been a lot of association, which is incorrect, of, you know, this massive, massive increase in death claims with life carriers and where, where the media is very clever, the media is very clever of not distinguishing group benefit plans versus individuals who are individually life insured, who have been paramedically examined, who have been fully underwritten, and who have a contract that is underwritten prior to issue, not after a death claim has been submitted. And so there's, there's a big difference there. When I'm talking about group benefits, I'm talking about an employer, for example, who has and provides to their employees the option of life insurance, which involves the creation of a benefit that would see one to two times to three times that employee's salary or annual earnings being paid out in the event of premature, you know, death. And of course, because there's no medical underwriting, there's only a few health questions. You know, have you ever been diagnosed with cancer? Have you ever had a heart attack? Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you drink a lot? Like whatever those questions are, there's no trusting but verifying or looking into a proposed life insurance medical history inside of a group employment benefit. You're really pooling the risk. You're pooling the risk with a pool of lives that have not been medically underwritten. And so when Covid strikes like a global pandemic and a lot of people are passing away who are enrolled in those plans, while again, the media, doing what the media does, goes and pontificates that, you know, the, the life insurance industry, everybody in their life insurance carrier home offices need to go buy hard hats because the sky's falling and the whole planet's dying and they just all happen to be insured with that particular life insurance company. And that's of course not the case. That's not what's happening with the mortality experience as it relates to people who are individually life insured and who have been paramedically underwritten before the policy has been issued. So I just thought that I would preface that because that's a question that's come up, you know, a few handfuls of occasions throughout this, this pandemic that we had most recently, you know, been fully immersed in. And so with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Rich. Thanks for letting me share that.

Well, and I, I'm going to add to that. Cause you make you bring up some good points because similar to that, the, the employee, the, in that group plan environment who's got their amount of coverage, whatever it is, it's in their benefit booklet often there's also an amount for a spouse and for children. And so those, those, all those numbers get tacked into what makes, you know, this, this large claim numbers that we're seeing. In the group business side. Yeah. And, and then in the group business side, we're not, you're not necessarily seeing, or at least the data that the media is pontificating about isn't indicating cause causes of death. We can, we can blame it on, on Covid adjacent things, meaning whether it was people getting sick or have comorbidities or other things going on, or it could just be ancillary things from those people being at home for two years. Right. So it's really not, you know, that's a bit of a murky thing. But what you also mentioned remind me of Nelson's book on page 36, where he talks about creating the entity and he talks about the design of insurance a little bit. There's even a chart of an old mortality table from 1958. Yeah. And Nelson would talk about the pig in the python. If you, if you look at that image, it looks like, you know, if you imagine a python swallowed a pig, well, that, that pig makes its way all the way through. And you Just see this lump of mass moving through the snake's body and starts at the beginning, it's a bigger lump, but by the time it gets down to the end, that lump has shrunk a lot because it's been digested by the snake. So there's an example of an image like that looking at the mortality table, which Nelson would always reference as the pig in the python. He says at the beginning here. In designing life insurance policies, the beginning point is the work of actuaries, the engineers of the whole process. They are working with a mortality table that is constructed from data on 10 million selected lives. So what Jason is just referencing, you've gone through a screening process, you've been underwritten. You, you know, the, the life insurance company has an opportunity to make a decision. Do we want to take on the risk of insuring this person's life? Yeah. And if they don't, they're either going to deny you upfront or they're going to write the policy so that they have enough money coming in to cover the risk. So they're putting a number on that risk. And Nelson goes on further to say people that have been through a selection process, not the person, quote unquote, off the street. The purpose of the selection process is to prevent adverse selection against the company. Right. That, that is to call out those persons who are facing predictable death in the near future. It would not be a good thing for all the people insured to include persons that have a terminal illness that are contemplating suicide. Cancer patients and people with heart disease fall in the same category and working with a theoretical lifespan of a hundred years. So Nelson literally walks you through all of it in the first two paragraphs on page 36. So.

And go ahead.

Well, I'll just say that that screening process is tremendously important, especially no again, now put yourself in a position where you're a participating whole life owner, as many of our listeners already are, as you and I are, and we co own an insurance company together. So, so they're managing this pool of money to make sure they can pay out death claims and provide a strong, stable, long term, you know, profitable dividends for their participating owners. And so you want to make sure that they're managing that pool really well. That means they're doing a good job at selecting the lives that shouldn't be in the pool versus the lives that they're willing to accept into the pool. That's right, yeah. And it's important that they do that. And insurance companies have a long standing, demonstrated history as far as I'm aware, that's unmatched on it with anything else on planet Earth of doing that in a demonstratedly proficient fashion.

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And there was an instance that really gave rise to this particular episode. And it, it just shined a light on the importance of not only full disclosure in, in the application process, but also the importance of, in, in necessary scenarios, the importance of paramedical examinations looking at a patient's or a proposed life insured medical history, et cetera. So this particular scenario was a, a client who owns and operates a business has key people in that business that the client decided hey, I, I want to insure. Now this is referred to as key man or key woman or, or key person insurance where the individual being proposed as the life insured is an individual that is creating significant value for that business and holds a very high degree of responsibility in that business. And God forbid, if that life insured passed away, there would be significant disruption and in many cases financial setback to the company. And so this company owner put forward a key person to ensure that key person went through the application process. But because the starting death benefit amount being applied for fell below the requirement for a full paramedical examination, which involves an attending physician statement from your doctor, the review of medical history, an extensive review, this all occurs prior to making a decision of approving or rating or declining coverage. Well, the proposed life insured went through the process where no paramedical examination was required and went through a very extensive health questionnaire and was offered coverage. So the corporate owner said, okay, we, we accept the offer, we're going to go ahead and have the policy issued and premiums were paid and in less than two years, which is the, what's referred to as a window of contestability, it's a two year window of contestability where if a person whose life is insured, if that individual dies, if that individual committed suicide or that individual fraudulently misrepresented himself or herself, then the insurance company would un, would deny the payment of the death claim within that two year window. Understandably. So outside of that two year window, the insurance company would have to prove that the life insured committed fraud. That would be the only reason that a death claim could, could not be paid outside of that two year window of contestability. So in this particular instance, sadly, the life insured, the key person passed away unexpectedly on a job site. And what happens is when that claim is submitted because it's within that two year window, the, in the adjudicator who adjudicates the death claim is going to look at medical history and look at all of these, you know, anybody who provided medical care to this individual. And what they discovered was quite alarming. Where questions on the life insurance application itself, health related questions, were.

Completely different than the documented hospital visits, medical care, everything that a person could not forget occurred or could not, you know, could not disclose because they, they didn't remember it like this was an abundance of evidence that would have led the underwriter to say we are not going to offer coverage at this time. And so what ended up occurring is the premiums paid were returned to the corporate owner who was, whose corporation owned the insurance contract and paid the premium. All that premium was returned and the death claim was not paid. And what gave rise to this episode was that we want to ensure that we're encouraging business owners who are out there. We recognize that not every key person insurance policy application is going to flow through the ascendant financial team. And so we just want to share some knowledge and some wisdom to say for all you business owners out there, if you're going to insure a key man, a key woman, a key person in your business, you need to ask the advisor to request a full paramedical exam, even if it is not required as part of the underwriting process. The rationale being the employee himself or herself simply might not be comfortable answering questions with the belief that the employer may be, may receive that disclosure if the employee has maybe consumes a little bit too much alcohol or maybe has maybe, maybe a criminal past or a dui, maybe has some medical history that the proposed life insured would prefer to maintain confidentiality or privacy on and might be very uncomfortable thinking that the employer is going to be made aware of what's been disclosed in this application. But failure to disclose for that reason.

Could cause the death claim to not be paid. And so let's ensure that we go through that paramedical examination, get the attending physician statement, get all that medical history so that the underwriter can make an informed decision. And then God forbid, if death occurs within that two year window of contestability, the insurance company was fully informed at the time of application and made a decision based on all that information. So the death claim would be paid, it would be paid out because the insurance company knowingly and with due information made a decision to offer coverage to that proposed life insured. And so the. This is just so critical, so critical to communicate forward to, to the general public who watch and, and who view our listen to our episodes make sure that you're having this discussion with an advisor that's helping you because believe me, it is not a good day when you have to have that difficult conversation that because of failure to disclose.

A death claim within that two year window of contestability is not being paid and premiums are being returned. What an incredibly difficult conversation at a time when people are right in the midst of grieving the loss of someone that they care about so much and that where the money, the death benefit proceeds would have shown up exactly when they were needed the most.

And so it's additional to that, Jason too, I think, and I, you may have indicated this, but just to expand on again, the business owner in this case, although he has maybe some opportunity cost loss and also, you know, the situation didn't go as intended, he did receive all the premiums funded back basically for the policy or the.

Oh, for sure, yeah, yeah.

So, so the, the business owner or the person in this instance, and in fact, if anyone, in the event that this happened, it's definitely not the desired outcome, but you're, you're not, you're not really technically at a loss because you're going to receive back the premiums you funded. Cause the insurance company, from a contractual standpoint, if they're not going to honor their part of the bargain because they have a reason not to, they have a demonstrated reason why that's not the case, well then they can't also have accepted the premium payments for that period of time. So they have to be refunded. Essentially.

Yeah. And I would say to also bring further, you know, peace and certainty to existing policy owners that of all the death claims that have been adjudicated in my 15 years of experience, this was the only instance where that death benefit was not paid. And understandably so because of failure to disclose, fortunately, all of the, all of the other, you know, clients that we're so grateful to serve have been fully disclosing and, and assured that that's always the right thing to do, is to disclose everything, give the life insurance company all the information that they would find helpful and necessary to make an underwriting decision. And so because this corporate owner was, is life insured as well? And so naturally, right. It, it, he raised the question like, is this going to impact my own coverage? And of course it, it's an uncomfortable question, but my question to him was, well, have you failed to disclose now you're insured well beyond the two year window of contestability? This particular client has been insured for several years. And so as Long as you haven't committed fraud or you're not committing fraud, God forbid, if you pass away, those death claims will be paid and they, the, the payment cannot be contested. It's again, we, we can't underscore the importance of disclosure enough.

And there's, you know, having sat in a, you know, in a, in a, in a room having a, having a meal with a number of people from a life company before and actually speaking to the, to people who operate in those claim adjudication departments, you know, it's kind of contrary to. I think at least it is in my experience thus far in the life insurance industry. Seems a bit contrary to what I believe most people or the general public feels about insurance as a wide blanket, as a wide paintbrush. Because there's, yeah, there's many kinds of insurance. They always think, oh, the car, car insurance people, they're just looking to weasel out and paying those claims. Like, like these are the kind of statements I think that people feel through some experience that they've had or a neighbor or friend or a buddy has had, you know, in a, in a different insurance environment. And with life insurance these, you know, during these adjudication processes they're actually striving to find out how can they pay that claim. That's their objective.

Their objective is to pay, let's get the money in the hands of the beneficiaries as quickly as possible. That's their mandate. Yeah, but they, they are, they have a fiduciary duty and a responsibility to all the existing owners of the life insurance company which if you are listening and watching and you're a participating policy owner. Next time you're speaking to an adjudicator, express your token of gratitude to say thank you for doing a great job and fulfilling your responsibility to, to the company that I co own because as a participating policy owner, you co own that life insurance company and you want that adjudicator to find every reason to pay the claim. That's what you want the adjudicator to do. But when there is material misrepresentation uncovered, you also want that adjudicator to execute their primary responsibility of being an adjudicator. Which also means that not every decision, it's going to be an easy one. And that when material representation is uncovered then it puts the adjudicator in, in a very, very difficult position. But necessary action is required to get back to the beneficiaries or to the, you know, the executor or to the corporate policy owner, individual policy Owner to get back and say, listen Houston, we've got a problem and this is what it is. But for the most part we can confidently say in concert with life insurance companies that the adjudicators want to pay the claim. They want to get that done.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it may be helpful even to just see and take a look at an example of, you know, what does an incontestability clause look like inside of an insurance contract? Sure, slightly vary between different, different companies, et cetera, but I'll bring one up here. So this is a snippet of, of one from a, from a life carrier. And so we can see here basically failure to disclose a fact or the misrepresentation of a fact in the application for the life insurance medical exam. Any written statement or answers given as evidence of insurability will cause the policy, including any riders, to be voidable by the company. So it kind of walks you through that right there. The policy is where the policy has been in effect for two years from the first policy year beginning date, or in the case of reinstatement, two years from the last reinstatement date with the exception of misstatement of age or sex, which is described below. The failure to disclose, except in the case of fraud, will not cause the policy or any riders to become voidable. So again, we're talking about a contestability period. And so it becomes incontestable after that two year window.

That's right.

One of the things identified in that statement is also around a reinstatement of the policy. So where we see something like that happen is as an example, let's say there's a, there's a term insurance policy and for whatever reason you're paying an annual premium. If you're anything like me and you get thousands of pounds of mail every year that seems to stack up in a giant pile. You don't necessarily get to opening all the things in that pile every once in a while. So maybe that's, that's you. And there's a, there's a document that didn't get opened, it went in the pile and you didn't see the renewal notice for the insurance. Right. So you have an insurance policy now as an example, a term insurance policy where it goes past the 31 day grace period and now that policy is effectively lapsed. They send you out another letter and a notice that says, hey, hey Richard, Geez, I don't know if you realize, but you don't have any coverage right now. Here's a special offer of a Reinstatement, if you'll go ahead and submit the premium, we will reinstate that policy for you. So you sign a document that declares that you're still alive, basically, and then you send it, you send it back in, the life insurance company reinstates the policy. But now because the policy is effectively lapsed, you have a brand new incontestability period that has kicked in from that timeframe as the contestability period. So, so again, it's important to understand if you have other types of insurance, so like a critical illness or you know, term insurance or these other types of policies, you want to make sure that you're not letting something just go by the wayside as a lapse because it could have again some negative consequences for doing that, other than just the pure fact that boy, oh boy, I couldn't imagine what it'd be like if you just let a policy lapse and then heaven forbid something happens to you, an expectation of insurance being in place and then it's not in place at all because of that, that a lapse of judgment which creates a lapse of the policy would definitely be a negative consequence. Now with the cash value policies, they have a built in provision which is, they're called non forfeiture options and that's called an automatic premium loan. So if there is existing cash values and loan availability in the policy, then the first thing that'll happen after that policy has not received payment, the insurance company will say, okay, we'll send out a notice. And then once it gets past a certain period, typically about 60 days, the insurance company will internally activate a self, self preservation mode of that insurance contract and it'll borrow from within the values as a premium loan. No different than when you would take a policy loan. It's effectively the same thing, it just shows up on a different line, right? They will go ahead and they'll pay up the annual premium as far as possible. So if that gets you all the way to the next anniversary, great. But if there's only enough value in there to maybe buy you three months, that policy will still lapse in a number of short months. And so there's a number of reasons why they do that. One being, obviously people want to preserve the policy. If there's value in the policy, it's sensible that you want to see that that thing goes in a self preservation mode. It should maintain itself as much as possible. And people travel, they go places, they go around the world, they might miss the notice, they might not be available, maybe you got injured and you're incapacitated, maybe you're in a coma. Well, if you're in a coma somewhere, in a hospital in some country, well, it'd be pretty nice to know that your policy is going to kind of continue to limp itself along as long as possible during that situation. So, again, it's a beautiful thing that the cash value insurance has in place as an added layer of, I think, protection overall and some peace of mind. But we can't stress enough the importance of making sure that you, as the policy owner, are responsible for not only to your loved ones, but to. To making sure that you maintain these contracts that you put in place because they're there to serve an intended purpose. And you want to make sure that if you've got it, you know, you'd rather be looking at it than looking for it. Good point. Yeah.

And so this is the key message. You know, just. You go through the process, just fully disclose and full, full disclosure, meaning that you're responding to questions based on your un. Your awareness, your memory recall, your right. If you, if you genuinely, genuinely forgot that you slipped on a banana peel 52 years ago, the insurance company's not going to hold you accountable for that if you pass away prematurely. But if you visited your doctor and your doctor said, hey, I need you to go for cancer screening because of that giant, that mass that you have on your forehead that I believe might be cancerous, and then you don't do that, and you go and apply for life insurance, and the question is, have you ever been advised to seek treatment or to be tested for, and you say no, and then you die as a result of that big tumor on your forehead, and it's three months after you got coverage, the insurance company's going to find out about that and they're going to deny the payment of the claim. And so just be fully disclosing and you've got nothing to worry about.

Well, and something you identified there kind of sparked another thought for me too, Jason, which I think this is an appropriate place to kind of throw it in. So, you know, again, we work with a lot of them. We're working with our existing clients. They already have coverage. They're well positioned as far as their insurance needs are required. And then we work with a lot of people who are brand new. They, they're really maybe learning about insurance and just in general and what it can do for them. For the very first time, maybe they have never had existing coverage. And unfortunately, there is just far too many Canadians, and I'm certainly positive North Americans you know, folks down south that just do not have any coverage, they think that their group plan or their group benefits will be sufficient. I can tell you flat out that is not the case. Your group plan, group benefit plan isn't yours. You don't own it. It's. And if you leave the group, if you get fired or laid off or you leave and you transition into your own business or something else, you don't.

Have any coverage anymore.

So that is not a, that is not part of a foundation of a solid financial planning mechanism. You need to own your own coverage. So flat out statement. But one of the things that it's important is if you don't have coverage and you are in the process of going through application, something that is offered by most companies, I don't know if there's any in Canada that don't offer it is what's called temporary insurance coverage. And so if, you know there's usually some specific questions, typically five or six questions, and if you can answer those questions successfully in the application and you pay consideration, so at least 1/12 of the annual premium. So whether you're doing monthly or annual doesn't matter. If you make one month's worth of the premium payment at the time of that application, then that insurance contract is bound. It goes to the life company to be, still assess. They're still gonna go through that screening process we identified. Yeah, but if something were to happen to you during that screening process or, or before the timeframe when you're able to sign the, and receive the final contract and, and, and pay the rest of the premium, et cetera, there is still temporary coverage in place. And so assuming that the life company would've approved you anyway, there is still an ability for having a payout in that situation. And that's a, that's a huge advantage, especially to people who just don't have coverage. So if you are in the application phase, absolutely. Make sure that that's something you consider doing so that you, you have every best possible chance to make sure that you have the coverage in place while the insurance company is conducting their underwriting process. Yeah, absolutely.

Very good.

Well, I would, I would say, Jason, this was a really fun topic to discuss, but I don't, I don't know if that's, that's a true statement or not.

Well, you know, it's, I, I think it's just, it's so important, you know, to that forward to, to people who are viewing and people who are listening because it, on the, on the extremely rare occasion where There's a case of misrepresentation. You know, the, the advisor who's helping you is also devastated, you know, because the, the advisor.

You know, did, did the best job that he or she could to, to help get that coverage put into place and really, truly feels a sense of fulfillment when a policy is issued and a person is insured. And it's. While the advisor cannot relate to the grief or the bereavement of the, of the, the family who's lost a loved one, the advisor is grieving too. And, and you know, when that news occurred with the case that I shared with you earlier, that was just a, it was such a, oh, it was such a difficult blow, right, to, to say, oh my God, like I, I've got to have this conversation. And what a difficult conversation to, to have. And it's just devastating that there was, there was just material misrepresentation in that instance and really, really sad and unfortunate, you know, in a time where people are already dealing with so much stress and grief. And so as you work through this process, if you're expanding your system of policies, if you're working with our team and when you meet, you know, our, our new business team and how they go through that process of completing the applications, they will ask you everything in every detail. And so be sure to, to, to provide full disclosure. I mean, the worst thing that can happen is the insurance company can come back and if there is legitimate reason to decline coverage, there may be reconsideration criteria that's provided. Say, you know what, we're not prepared to offer coverage at this time, which declines are extremely rare by the way, but when they do happen, most often they're accompanied by reconsideration criteria. Hey, we're not prepared to offer you coverage at this time, but if you visit with a physician and get your cholesterol, your blood pressure under control, if you lose X amount of pounds and maintain that weight loss for a consecutive 12 month period, then we would be prepared to reconsider coverage at that time. So it gives you something to work toward. And don't you want to know? I mean, goodness, if there is a legitimate health issue, don't. Don't you want to know? I had a. I'll share this with you before we conclude the episode. I had a prospective client. This was a few years ago. And this client, when I had first met her, she didn't proceed right away. She came, she came back many months later and she looked like a completely different human being. I said, oh my God, like you've lost a lot of weight and how are you doing? And she said, oh, I'm, I'm doing wonderful. You know, I'm, I'm doing this P90X, you know, weight training and physical exercise and yeah, like I've, I've lost like £40. And I said, oh my goodness, like, you look like a different human being. Congratulations. She goes, I'm ready to go forward now with this life insurance. And she hadn't gone through the underwriting process several months earlier. And so I said, okay, let's, let's initiate that. And during the application process, she had been communicating that, yeah, you know, I've been working out, but I've been feeling, I, I have admittedly, I've been feeling, you know, know the, the symptoms that she had indicated. And so the application was submitted, full disclosure, and the underwriter ordered paramedics, did a blood profile, contacted me and said, you need to tell your prospective client to go to an emergency room and seek immediate, immediate medical treatment. And unbeknownst to this perspective, life insured. She had a severe medical issue that needed attention. She wasn't losing the weight because of the weightlifting.

Oh my.

She had a, she had a severe problem that needed to be addressed and dealt with. So again, that process saved her life.

And so I couldn't get on the horn fast enough with her to say, I, I don't want you to alarm yourself and perhaps somebody should maybe drive you or I don't want you to get into a car and go 900 miles an hour to an emergency room and get into a car accident along the way. But I'm, I have a duty to communicate to you what the underwriter communicated to me. You need to seek immediate medical treatment without delay, not booking a doctor's appointment two weeks from now, go to the hospital. And here, here's what you need to indicate as you're being checked in and sure enough that, you know, the necessary medical treatment was rendered and it saved her life. And so, you know, good, good things can come out of, you know, out of these situations too.

Yeah, that's a, a very good story and I think it's a, an eye opening story for people to recognize because you just, you just never know. I, I wouldn't say I've had that same experience, but I would say I've had some similar experiences where somebody's had something going on and it's caused a postponement on, on an application and it's given that that individual a bit of a kick in the butt to Go and take care of a couple of things that were necessary for sure, so that they could, they could, you know, improve their, their health condition, you know, and then, and then similarly, I would, you know, there are, you know, situations where again, the reasons that people might end up with a decline or a temporary decline or a postponement, there could be a variety of them. And sometimes it comes down to things like, like habits as an example. You know, we live in a, in an age I think today where now people are more. There's a lot of information out there. There, there's podcasts, lots of material. There's lots of people seeking a lot of, you know, health, health treatment that are outside of the, the, the mainstream medical system as we've been accustomed to knowing it. Yeah, they're learning about different supplements and things they want to do. A lot of people are looking into things like longevity, et cetera. And so there's people who might be seeking, like as an example I've heard of, you know, many, many men who are in their 40s and beyond and they're seeking, say, testosterone treatments or injections or steroids of some kind. Well, that can be viewed potentially, I'm not going to say exclusively, but certainly potentially in a negative light. From an underwriting perspective, again, does it come with, in tandem with a doctor's doctor's information? It says, hey, we've recommended this for this, this and this reason. Right. Or is it because we went and saw what the underwriting people like to call the feel good doctors? And then that causes a little bit, that could cause some concern. It doesn't mean it's not, you're not going to get covered. It just means that these are things that. Okay, well, we're going to look into this a little bit more. We want to expand a little bit more on this and understand what's going on. So there are some things like that to be aware of and at the end of the day, you know, it just, just go get the application done because you don't know what the lender is going to say until we send it in. Nobody knows if you're covered until you can get the coverage.

Totally, totally.

And I'm glad, I'm glad that we.

Walked through this today and it'll be a permanent, you know, mainstay in our catalog of episodes and a permanent mainstay on our YouTube channel. And, you know, something to people can, can reference, you know, and hopefully, who knows, it, it may save a life or two. It may, you know, it may help an, an Underwriter, it may help an adjudicator and by proxy the person applying and the person who's going to own the policy to sleep easy at night knowing, hey, you know what, if the unthinkable happened, we're, we're going to be okay because we were fully disclosed. We're quite confident in that. And paramedical exam was ordered and attending physician statement was obtained and the insurance company has all the available information to make an intelligent underwriting decision and then is responsible for that underwriting decision. And so yeah, I think it's good that we got this done today.

Well, and, and a final thought that comes up for me is again, you identified, hey look, if you're going to get insurance on a key employee, make sure that you recommend that, that paramed. But another thing is when you have an owner and you have an insured that are two different people. So it could be in this case business owner, key employee, but it could be parent is the owner and child, adult child is the insured. Right? Or it could be parent is the insured and adult child is the owner. So in these situations, this could be a bit of an area where, hey, maybe that's not the right environment where you want to have both people on the call answering all the medical questions.

Right?

You can handle the owner questions separate with the advisor or the person who's taking the application and then you can handle the medical aspect with the life insurance separately. Don't create an environment intentionally where there would ever be a cause for someone to consider withholding any kind of information because of embarrassment or anything of that nature. You really want that full disclosure. So conduct the application in such a way where you set yourself up for the best success. And, and if you're in the pre process of getting insured, you know, an advisor will probably be able to get you a, a questionnaire list that the life company is likely gonna ask. Consider going through that in advance so you can think about, hey, oh yeah, when was the last time I saw my doctor? Geez, it's been a while. You know, I, I, I did an application today and I had to go back and say, geez, I, I don't remember the last time that happened. Going through dates in my head, looking up a few things online, looking to some past emails, I was able to track down the information. But these are not things that we think about commonly because we're busy in life, we've got other things going on and other priorities. So it's okay to take 10 minutes.

Out of your day out of your.

Life, you're making an important decision. You're getting insurance to protect your family. Take the necessary time, a few minutes. Put a little bit of focused energy into being prepared so that you can make that a smooth, streamlined process for all the parties involved, which includes you.

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