Waiver of premium on a life insurance policy is a rider that you can optionally add and which may pay the premiums of a life policy for you during a period of disability. This can help keep your valuable life insurance in place for your family during a time when you are already vulnerable because of a disability. A disability can be caused by either an accident or an illness.
The problem or issue with most of the waivers of premium from the various life insurance companies is that the definition of what is a disability is not very good. A typical waiver will read that a disability is defined as not being able to do all the duties of your occupation, and not being able to do any other occupation that you are reasonably suited to. That means that if you are a professional in the oil and gas industry who has a disability, you may not get paid if you could still work as a clerk in a store. Also most waiver of premium riders stop paying benefits at age 65.
It is often better to cover the cost of your life insurance premium in case of disability – with your disability insurance policy. That is because you may have a much more liberal definition of disability in your disability insurance plan. For example a personal disability insurance policy may pay for both partial and total disabilities. You would be covered if you cannot do your own occupation, as opposed to only being covered if you couldn’t do any occupation.
With disability insurance people who are in more stable and less risky professions, for example – accountants, have both better definitions of disability and cheaper premiums. People in higher risk industries for injury like roofers or industrial divers will pay much higher premiums, if they can get disability insurance at all.
On the other hand, Waiver of Premium riders do not have different rates for different job classifications. Therefore this rider may make sense to people in occupations which would pay high rates for disability insurance. For most other policyholders it does not represent a good value. If you would like to get a disability insurance quote to see what your premium would be, please visit our disability insurance quote request page at https://rhminsurance.com/request-disability-insurance-quote/