Underwriting Life Insurance During The Pandemic

What has changed about underwriting life insurance during the pandemic? Almost everything about our lives has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, how we interact with our friends and family, our businesses, our schools, and our favorite restaurants. One of the things that has changed along with these is the underwriting processes for life insurance, and these changes vary by carrier.

Foresters Financial

One of the carriers with changes to their application and underwriting process during the COVID pandemic has been Foresters. Like many other carriers, Foresters has begun including a COVID-19 related questionnaire in their application process with questions such as:

“Within the past 30 days, has a parent or sibling living in your household been diagnosed with or been treated for COVID-19 (Coronavirus)? If “Yes”, please provide details.”
“Within the past 30 days, have you been advised to self-isolate or be quarantined, due to symptoms of, or for any other reason related to, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)?”

If a client answers yes to any of the questions that are presented in the questionnaire then they are ineligible to gain coverage for 60-90 days and must reapply when this period has transpired.

TransAmerican Life Insurance

One of the carriers with the most aggressive changes to their underwriting for life insurance and clients that they will accept during the pandemic is Transamerica. Under the new COVID-19 guidelines, they will no longer be accepting applications for clients over the age of 75 and there will be no living benefits for the policies of clients between the ages of 56-75. The company will also no longer cover long term care riders or chronic and critical living benefit riders.

National Life Group

The underwriting process of National Life Group has changed some as well; with their EZ Underwriting system’s limit going up from $1 million to $3 million. The EZ Underwriting system allows for much faster application and decisions on new policies, and this change allows for more potential new policyholders to utilize this benefit.

Why These Changes Are Happening

With a public health emergency as large as COVID-19, insurance companies are taking on more risk by introducing new policies since the outcomes are very uncertain in these times.