If you ask this question of your agent or broker and the answer isn’t “YOU,” find someone else to work with.  Yes, a reputable disability agent/broker should represent the major disability insurance companies, but, as your representative, he/she should be working toward your best interests.

I was recently competing with another agent for someone’s business.  I presented 5 different options for this person, while the other agent represented one company.  While the other company is an excellent insurance company and offers a decent disability insurance policy, the premiums, if offered with all the benefits the client should have, would have been significantly higher than four of my offerings.

The only way this agent could compete was to strip the policy of some very essential benefits, thereby reducing the premium to a somewhat competitive level.  The problem with this strategy was that he was now offering a significantly inferior policy and, if he wanted to make the sale, he would have to convince the client that some of the stripped benefits were not essental.

As an example, he removed the Non-Cancellable clause of the policy, which means that the insurance company could raise the premium or change the benefits or even cancel the policy in the future.  He justified this by saying that the client didn’t need this feature because the insurance company has never raised the premiums on these types of policies.   Even if this was true, every agent knows that past performance is no guarantee of future performance.  This is terrible advice given to a potential client only for the purpose of making the sale – not for the purpose of doing the best thing for the client.

So my suggestion, when interviewing a new agent or broker, is to ask them who they represent.  Now you know what the correct answer should be…”YOU.”