FPA Journal – Focus: Disability Insurance: Are Your Clients Truly Protected?
This is an excellent article (pdf) on Disability Insurance written by Nancy Opiela of the FPA
Let’s face it: there’s no way you believe that you will become sick or disabled and unable to work. And your clients feel the same way. “We all think we’re Superman,” says Patrick Hehir, CFP®, of Innovative Planning Services Inc. in Woodbury, New York, “but all we have to do to understand the mistake we’re making is look at what happened to Superman, Christopher Reeve. I also point to a recent tragedy here in New York, the Staten Island Ferry accident, where many people died and many others were maimed. If you asked any of those
commuters if anything was going to happen to them that morning, you know what their response would be: ‘I’m taking a nice, safe ferry ride to New York.”The protection clients need, says Hehir, is disability insurance. “The risk-management book I used to study for my CFP certification states that disability insurance is by far the most important and that some authorities argue that loss-of-income protection should come even before life insurance,” he explains. “Disability insurance protects the largest asset people own: their ability to earn an income. Without that protection, most financial plans will fail should a disability occur. But I’m willing to bet most planners spend more time on the life insurance sale than on disability insurance. That’s clearly a mistake as statistics prove the risk of becoming disabled before age 65 is significantly greater than the chance of dying before age 65.”
Norman Politziner, CFP®, of NJP Associates in Highland Park, New Jersey, who has been working with disability insurance since 1978, says it is probably the most overlooked and least understood form of insurance — and that the lack of understanding extends to the planning community. “Most planners didn’t start in the insurance business and have a misperception that disability is too expensive and too hard to get,” he says. “Because most planners are not trained in the nuances of disability coverage, they leave their clients unprotected.”
Here, planners active in the field of disability insurance discuss what type of coverage clients need and, most importantly, how to convince them that it’s in their best interests.
Read more via the original Source pdf documant: FPA Journal – Focus: Disability Insurance: Are Your Clients Truly Protected?