United Of Omaha Continues To Dominate With FIT Credits!

Table rated term insurance offers continue to tumble to a standard rate with United of Omaha’s health and lifestyle credit method, what they call their Fit test.

I continue to be pleasantly amazed at how the company is honoring this commitment to reward good health and lifestyle for those who would normally take a bit of a whacking due to some other health issue. Two cases that we presented this week took table 2 offers on prostate cancer and bipolar disorder and shaved them down to standard rates.

What really stands out about their Fit credits is that things like family history, never having smoked and minimal alcohol use are rewarded. They also reward a good build (preferred example 6′, 211) and a good driving record (no more than 2 violations in the last three years). Most table shave programs in the past have 1. Only been available on universal life and 2. Didn’t have any definable criteria. This resulted in a lot of table shave programs having a table 3 to standard shave available at the underwriters discretion and, surprise, a lot of table 4 approvals that didn’t qualify.

With the Fit test there are 11 questions and you only need 5 yes answers to move from table 3 to standard. With their standard rate being a very competitive term rate, this can be huge, for instance, potentially lowering an approved rate of $1750.00 down to $1000.00 a year.

Other health issues where United has come through for us are things like sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes.

Banner Life has given us some help in the better rate classes with, again, definable criteria to be able to move from something like preferred to preferred plus. An example would be cholesterol. Their normal criteria for preferred plus is a total of 220 and a ratio (total/HDL) of 5.0 or less. Now they will allow the best rate with a total cholesterol of 250 if the ratio is 4.0 or less.

Bottom line. Every little break can save big money over the life of a policy and it’s critical for agents to keep their finger on the pulse of these opportunities.