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Your choice of a disability insurance policy is an important one. If you become disabled, your disability insurance could keep your financial plans for your family on track. While other forms of insurance protect your survivors and your possessions, disability insurance protects your income.

With solid disability insurance, a portion of your income will continue even if you are laid up for years due to illness or injury. That could help you maintain your family’s standard of living.

If you choose well. And that means looking beyond the price tag.

Of course, price is a consideration, but it is far from the only one. Your disability insurance needs may be complex, so it pays to seek the help of a specialist—someone who not only knows the ins and outs of disability insurance, but who is also familiar with the special income protection needs of physicians and who will help you work out the right cost/benefit ratio.

Your insurance salesperson neighbor, well-meaning as he or she might be, may not be your best consultant. You need someone who works with and for physicians, and who is familiar with their particular challenges— a physician insurance professional.

The Physician Insurance Specialists at AMA Insurance tick those important boxes. And, as an association insurance plan, disability insurance offered by AMA Insurance is cost competitive as well. Those points make AMA-sponsored Disability Income Insurance a good choice.

Our Physician Insurance Specialists are well-versed in the complexities of disability insurance, especially in the unique requirements of physicians, and they are salaried, not paid commissions. When they make recommendations, you can depend on the fact they are not motivated by compensation.

This is an area where the advice of an experienced and unbiased counselor will prove to be invaluable. They will help you examine the protection you already have, assess its real value allowing for the possibility that it may be taxable, and determine how much you would need to supplement that . . . next year, five years from now or fifteen years from now. And they will explain possible exclusions and limitations and show you how you can customize your policy with optional riders—and when it makes financial sense to do so.

You must be absolutely certain that the company providing your disability insurance policy is strong and dependable. The average disability claim is paid over a period of three years[1], and if there is a permanent disability, payments could continue until retirement age.

Here are some points to consider when you are looking to make a good choice between disability insurance providers and their policies:

• Are they big or small?
• How long have they been in business?
• Do they rank among the leaders in the industry?
• Do they rank well among the rating agencies?
• What rating agencies should I look at?

There are several companies who rate insurers’ financial stability. Among the leaders are A.M. Best, Standard & Poors, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Investors Service.

The Insurance Information Institute advises: “Each has its own rating scale, its own rating standards, its own population of rated companies, and its own distribution of companies across its scale. Each agency uses numbers or plusses and minuses to indicate minor variations in rating from another rating class. The agencies disagree often enough so that you should consider a company’s rating from two or more agencies before judging whether to buy or keep a policy from that company.”²

When you are seeking a rock-solid income protection plan, the price is only one consideration. Trust is even more important, and you can trust the experience of our Physician Insurance Specialists and AMA Insurance.

If you are looking for disability coverage that works for you from highly rated insurers, get in touch with a Physician Insurance Specialist today. We will help you build disability income coverage that is a good choice— the right choice— for you. You can request a conference online here or call 888-627-5902.

Kendra Henderson is a Physician Insurance Specialist at AMA Insurance. She specializes in disability and life insurance and works with physicians and their families at every career stage. Kendra is licensed to sell insurance in all 50 states and has helped hundreds of physicians nationally with their disability coverage.