Age 86 - New York

[JGold814]

I've got a client who is turned 86 in April and lives in New York. Are there any carriers who can work with his age in that state?

We looked at backdating to age 85 with Pru and Omaha, but they both said they would prefer not to offer coverage - the client takes 2 RXs for depression. About 10 years ago, he was misdiagnosed with alzheimers and the doctor told him to continue taking the medication as it's also used for depression and can be used as a preventative measure as well (his brother was diagnosed with alzheimers at age 94) - this medication is one of the 2 depression rxs currently being taken.

I've spoken with the client by phone and he appears pretty sharp and can easily recall information from our earlier conversations with no difficulty. No other major health issues.

Any ideas?

 

[BNTRS]

Here's how must underwriting will view this situation.

He's already passed his life expectancy. He has a condition (depression) that doesn't tend to correlate with shortened LE, but it also doesn't improve it either.

In their eyes (because their system has a degree of rigidity to it) he's living on borrowed time.

While it may not technically be true, they will almost all certainly look at it this way.

What sort of death benefit does he want?

 

[JGold814]

The client is looking for up to $500,000 of coverage for estate planning purposes. As to why he didn't do this 10-20 years ago, I don't know. But he contacted us and when we discussed potential premiums for that amount of coverage, he acknowledged they are manageable and understands he would be self-insured within approximately 6.5-7 years (from the figures we looked at).

Do you know of any carriers that would be available?

We can go to the underwriters and discuss the matter with them, but need to know which carriers would be able to consider his age in new york before we can look into the underwriting evaluation. Need a starting point.