Declined Life Insurance Doesn’t Lead To More Declined Life Insurance!

There is this perverse notion, an urban legend if you will, that if you get declined for life insurance you become life insurance toast from then on. You might as well buy accidental death insurance and just hope that space junk and not cancer is the cause of your demise.

I had a client just recently who wanted to work incognito with me so that I wouldn’t expose his name to the insurance industry and get him blackballed from ever being able to get coverage. I went along with this for a while not really caring who he was for quote purposes so his last name was Smith and I had to fax things to him because he refused to give me his email. I shopped the case, not an easy one, based on all of the information he provided and was able to get on company to make a reasonable offer. Presented with this option he was still holding back, not wanting to commit to an application that would inject his name and information into the real world where people have to qualify, or not, for insurance.

At that point I contacted the client and let him know that I was not comfortable moving forward simply because all of the secrecy and paranoia really left me wondering if I was being told the whole truth or if this client knew something that would get him declined and just wasn’t sharing that with me. He assured me full disclosure had been made and that it would mean a lot to him if I would stick with him. He apologized for all the secrecy. He said he was just concerned because he knew he was a tough case and he was afraid if he got declined he would be blackballed……so we applied and within a few days he was declined due to information in his driving record.

When I found out what the information was all the pieces fell into place about why he was so paranoid and why I was not catching a good feeling about the whole thing. I called and let him know he was declined and the information that led to the decline and, no surprise, he was ticked at me. He said, “well you never asked me that”, which was true. It was just bizarre enough that all of my experience would have never led me to ask the question that would have made it perfectly clear that he would not be approved at this time.

As a gesture of good will I shopped his case anonymously using the information I now knew and couldn’t find any companies willing to look at the case for a period of time. So, it’s not declined life insurance that leads to more declines. Declines are based on factual information no other company’s opinions. I work with declines all the time and get most of them turned around. If he wasn’t quite such an angry guy he would be able to get the fact that he’s now in the driver’s seat. He’s been declined but he now knows exactly when and under what circumstances he can get approved.

Bottom line. I’ve said so many times that declines are a good place to start. I know they suck and don’t feel good, but if you take the information and use it to your advantage, everything will work out. If you have any questions or would like to run a recent decline scenario by me, call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.