If you have had prostate cancer and need to get life insurance than you really need to work with an impaired risk specialist who knows what they are doing so that you can find out if you can get approved for coverage. Quoting someone after Prostate cancer can be tricky because there are several factors that you need to evaluate to know if someone can get approved, if they would be declined, or postponed. Being postponed basically means that you need to wait a certain amount of time after treatment ends before you can get approved for coverage. Depending on the factors that I am about to list, you could get coverage immediately after successful treatment, or there might be a five year waiting period or longer before you can get coverage.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer for men, and we specialize in life insurance with prostate cancer. In this article I’ll cover what life insurance companies look for when evaluating a life insurance application for someone with a history of prostate cancer. If you have had prostate cancer and would like to get a quote, simply fill out our quote request form right below this paragraph, otherwise keep reading for more information on life insurance with prostate cancer.
Here are some important factors that will determine your ability to get approved for coverage:
The most important factors that will determine your ability to get approved, and pricing are the PSA prior to treatment, Gleason score, and how long has passed since treatment has been completed.
A high Gleason score over 9 and a diagnosis prior to age 50 will most likely result in a 5 year postponement period from the end of treatment.
However if your Gleason score was lower – around 2-6, for example it may be possible to get approved for life insurance immediately following successful treatment.
If you had a low staging you may get Standard rates, although typically you will probably fall into the substandard rating of table 2-4.
Let’s take an example of a 60 year old male applying for $250,000 of 15 year term life insurance at a Table 2 Health Rating:
In this case the best price is with Banner Life Insurance at $192.72 per month. A 10 year term policy would be $153.34 per month, also with Banner having the most affordable quote.
If you have been cancer free for 5 years or more, you may get Standard rates. A 60 year old male applying for the same $250,000 policy at a Standard Rate would get the following pricing:
As you can see, there are several factors that would determine your ability to get approved for life insurance with prostate cancer.
Recently I had a case of a 53 year old male who had successful treatment of prostate cancer when he was 51. Here are his numbers:
His Pre cancer PSA was 16, Stage and Grade of T3a N0, Gleason score of 7, has a prostatectomy as treatment, and post surgery PSA of .09.
I called several underwriters of life insurance companies that I've had success in getting people with Prostate Cancer approved. For example I spoke to Prudential, but they would not approve because he had cancer about 2 years prior, the stage and grade, and his age of 51. Had he been 65 and had prostate cancer 2 years prior, they would have approved.
My feeling at this point was that no life insurance company would approve him, but I decided to email the situation to about 15 life insurance companies to see if they could give me an indication if we had a chance for approval. Rather than having him apply and waste his time or disappoint him, I wanted to get an idea if we had a shot.
The emails from the underwriters started coming in the following day, and one after another they were a decline, or a postponement - meaning they wanted to see a 5 year period post cancer before they would approve. Lincoln Financial came back with an indication that they would consider approval at Standard rates with a Flat Extra for the first 10 years. A Flat Extra is basically an additional fee. In this case the additional fee is $7 annually per $1000 worth of coverage - in this case for a $250,000 policy there would be an additional premium of $145 per month, plus the $90 premium for the policy. Our strategy would not be to pay the Flat Extra forever, but rather keep this policy for a few years until we could get a policy without a Flat Extra in a few years
We put in the application this week so I don’t have an outcome yet, however the point of this case study is to show you that having expertise in quoting and navigating the various guidelines of life insurance companies requires a special skill of knowing what information to ask for, what information to provide to the insurance companies, and how to get someone approved for coverage even though many other companies would decline them.
As a high risk life insurance specialist this is what I help my clients do. Feel free to contact me with your specific situation and I can assess your situation and let you know what the prospects are for getting life insurance after having prostate cancer.
My name is Liran Hirschkorn and in this video, I'm going to talk to you
about getting approved for life insurance after having prostate cancer,
coming up.
If you've had prostate cancer, getting an idea of whether or not you can
get approved for life insurance is very tricky, because there are a lot of
factors that go into whether or not you can get approved for coverage. It's
not just a matter of that you've been successfully treated. Let's go
through some of the factors that will go into whether or not you can get
coverage.
First, it's important to know, what age were you diagnosed with the cancer,
and when did the treatment end? The older you are, the more into your mid-
50s to 60s or older that you've had it. Actually, it's a little bit easier
to get, because somebody who's 40 and has had prostate cancer presents a
higher risk to an insurance company than somebody who's 60 or 65 who has
had prostate cancer, because it's a little bit more common at that age. So,
age is a factor.
The other factor is what was your pre-cancer PSA? The next factor we want
to look at is what your stage and grade was for the cancer. The earlier in
the process that the lower stage of cancer, the easier it's going to be for
you to get coverage. We also want to look at the Gleason score. The lower
the score, the easier it's going to be to get approved for coverage. And,
we want to look at the type of treatment you had, whether it was surgery,
whether it was radiation. We want to look at the treatment and we want to
know what your post-cancer PSA is.
All these factors are going to play a role in knowing what kind of rate
you're going to be able to get for coverage, and are you going to be able
to get coverage immediately after successful treatment? Is there going to
be a six-month waiting period that you have to wait? Is there a year, two
years, or five years? Sometimes, you can get coverage right away. Sometimes
you have to wait a five-year period before you can get approved for life
insurance.
When we speak about getting approved for life insurance post prostate
cancer, it's not black and white whether you can get approved right away or
not, or whether there's going to be a waiting period or not. All these
factors go into play.
If you've had prostate cancer and are looking to get a life insurance
policy, visit our website. Click on the link below, or go to our Contact Us
page, and let us know what your situation is. I can help you figure
out what your options are for having a chance to get approved for
life insurance post prostate cancer. Thank you.