Inexpensive War Risk Insurance For Civilian Contractors!

If you’ve entertained looking into high paying work in Iraq and Afghanistan, you’re not alone with the job situation here. The lure of a year or two of work to get back on financially stable ground is tempting.

But “job” comes with an asterisk in places where folks are hurting each other and the truth is buying life traditional life insurance once you are considering taking that job isn’t an option. Putting anywhere that bullets are flying on your foreign travel questionnaire is a quick trip to the decline pile.

I have been touting a high risk accidental death policy through Global Underwriters, ultimately underwritten by AIG, the same policy that I use for private pilots and student pilots who are doing out of the ordinary flying. I had priced pilots through Lloyds of London in the past and the Global Underwriters policy was significantly less expensive.

I unfortunately made a leap of assumption that the AIG policy for civilian workers in a war zone would be less than Lloyds also. The AIG policy is pricey, a $1 million accidental death and dismemberment policy running over $18,000 annually. My assumption based on aviation prices led me to not even look into what Lloyds would charge for someone working in Afghanistan. Big mistake on my part. The good news starts with the fact that I didn’t sell any of the AIG policies for workers in war zones.

The really good news is that an accidental death and dismemberment policy through Lloyds is about 1/4 of the price of the AIG policy. Just a simple high risk accidental death policy for $1 million is $4000 a year and if you add dismemberment benefits it is only $4750 a year. The only downside I have found to the much better priced product is that while it can be applied for electronically, before Lloyds will issue the actual policy they have to have a copy of the application with an original signature. As for me, if I could save that much and get the coverage I needed, I could cough up enough for a Fedex from Afghanistan.

Bottom line. To those I quoted the higher priced product to, I truly apologize. Going forward there won’t be any stones left unturned in ensuring that each case is shopped just like I am so careful to do with impaired risk life insurance.

One important step before buying anything for the new job is the look at your current life insurance. If you took it out prior to your dream of making the big bucks paving streets in Baghdad, you’re covered. Call your life insurance company and confirm it, but the answer really has to be yes. They can’t pull the plug on your coverage just because you take up riskier activity.