Curious what your average premium is? 16k, wow not a bad first year comp. Got a buddy high up in corporate for Illinois Mutual has me interested in trying to break into this niche. From what he tells me IM is geared more to blue collar. What carriers do you prefer?
I write a lot of residents/fellows before they start practicing so a lot of them start in the $2-5k/year range, but once they fully exercise the future increase option the total policy cost on average for a doctor would be $5k-15k depending on age/gender/occupation class. Many of these DI sales result in $1M-5M life insurance policies too and since most of these docs are 30-35 years old when buying the DI, they are in very good health and often a slam dunk Preferred/Preferred Plus rate on the life insurance.
The great thing about DI is once you start building a rep, you get a lot of referrals from doctors to other doctors. I don't do any DI advertising at all and stay pretty busy. There are so few knowledgeable agents on the DI side that there isn't much competition unlike life insurance where you have to compete against Select Quote and all the other call centers. DI is a much more complex product with a lot of underwriting variables so you really need to know your stuff.
IM is geared towards the blue-collar market. Guardian is my top company since they have the best benefits and great comp with pricing that is usually competitive. Even when they are a little more expensive than other companies it is easy to justify why docs should be buying the best coverage they can get. If another company is 20%+ lower than Guardian there may be more "value" in choosing the other company instead, but when pricing is within ~10-15% most of my clients will opt to pay the extra for Guardian. After all, most of them are earning $250k+ so what's another $300-400/year to have the best they can get? They are also relatively well known among doctors as having the best DI coverage sort of like how people know that BCBS has the best PPO provider network for health insurance.
Typical comp example for a top producer: Anesthesiologist earning $400k. DI policy $8k/year (once coverage is fully exercised) 70% first year comp = $5600. 17.5% renewals = $1,400 annually. 30 years of renewals = $42,000 + $5600 first year comp = $47,600 comp over 30 years. That does not even include a supplemental DI policy from Petersen, future disability buy-out or overhead expense coverage, life insurance, referrals, etc.
Once a DI policy is in place, it is pretty much locked for their entire working career - replacing a good DI policy is extremely difficult because as they get older it will get more expensive to buy a new policy, their health could change, they might be eligible for group coverage, etc.
MM has a good early DI policy for med school and law school students. Has anyone ever used it as a foot in the door for a niche market? I have two friends in both law and med school but I couldn't get them to bite...no money. Maybe someone has a different experience.
