Best DI for White Collar?

They have a lifetime benefit rider available (Met Life is the only other company that offers this)

Define lifetime. Are we talking, til age 65/67, or are we talking about until death? I find it hard to believe someone would pay a DI claim on a 40 year old to age 80 or beyond.

If they do offer this rider, what does it do to the premium?
 
Lifetime means till death. The rider is available until insured is around age 40, can't remember the exact age at the moment.

After age 45 the benefit will begin to grade down until age 65 when it reaches zero. This means if you have a disability from issue to age 45 you can receive benefits until you die. If you become disabled after that the benefit amount you receive at the policy's expiration date (e.g. 65 or 67) will decrease depending on what age you were when the disability began, and then continue until death. However this rider can be used with a COLA rider.

The cost of the rider itself isn't all that high, but it will raise the cost of the COLA rider quite a bit since the COLA rider remains in effect while the life time rider is, viz. until death.

The theory behind the rider is that it protects younger insured's from a disasterous retirement if a permanent disability occurs early in life.
 
Mass offer something similiar, but I would say Mass' rider is a bit more straightforward. It places money into a trust to replace lost retirement contributions once the insured is disabled. The trust can then make payments to the insured after age 65 or 67.

Off-hand it sounds like the Mass rider is probably better for someone later in life, while the Guardian rider is better for someone under 40.
 
We are talking about two different things here. The rider you are referring to is available from Guardian as well, and can also be purchased as a stand alone policy, which I beleive can be done at Mass as well.

The retirement protection rider/policy does exactly as you say, but again benefits on that are only paid into the trust until the insured reaches age 65 or 67. Then, as you have pointed out, the insured can begin taking distributions from the trust.

I'm a fan of using this as well, since with a qaulified retirement plan one cannot contribute to such a plan if they are disabled and not earning any income, and it allows them to cover an employer match if one is available. The one draw back using this feature can have is the amount covered by their regular IDI policy and the retirement rider or policy is combined against their available participation limit. So if an individual has an available participation of say $10,000, and I want to write a policy with retirement contribution protection, part of the $10,000 will go towards the trust and the remainder will be recieved by the insured while on claim.
 
There are several quality products available for white collar professionals and it is hard to declare one "the best" as it depends on the situation; age, gender, health, occupation, geographical location, etc...

That being said, the top companies are:
Berkshire, MetLife, Principal, and Mass Mutual.

Some other players that have good contracts but are not AM Best Rated A+ or better are Standard and Union Central.
 
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