Veterinary
Disability Insurance

As a veterinarian, it is critical that you choose a definition of disability that covers you in your veterinary specialty. This means if you become too sick or injured to work in your veterinary specialty, you can still work in another veterinary specialty or occupation and continue to receive benefits.

Some policies refer to this as own occupation, regular occupation or your occupation. The most important thing is that it will pay you a monthly benefit if you couldn’t practice as a veterinarian even if you could work in another occupation. With this type of policy, there is no reduction of benefits if you decide to work elsewhere.

If you work for a large group or practice, you may be offered a group policy. Usually you cannot opt out of taking the policy. Group policies typically offer a limited monthly benefit (60 percent of your income to a maximum amount). Group policies can’t discriminate – they must offer coverage to everyone in the group. Consequently, they often lack the important provisions of a personal policy. Learn more about the difference between group and individual policies here.

Get Veterinarian Disability Insurance by requesting a free quote today!

If you are concerned about paying for your disability insurance while you finish your residency or become established, there are several things we can do to reduce your premium as much as possible.

• Discounts. Set for Life Insurance has discounts at many of the veterinary schools around the country including Colorado State University. These discounts can be significant, especially to women since the rates are unisex.  Once you have the discount on the policy, they will apply to any increases in the future.
• Association discounts. Set for Life Insurance offers discounts to several veterinary associations around the country. This can save you an extra 10% on your premiums.
• Work with an independent broker. Rates vary substantially from company to company for veterinarians. This is primarily because of the way companies classify veterinarians. Some companies consider veterinarians a great risk, thus reducing their premiums.
• Specify if you work with small or large animals. Small animal veterinarians will pay a lot less in premiums as they are considered a more favorable risk to the insurance companies and charge less.
• Some companies allow a “graded” or increasing premium. This is initially less expensive and your premium will increase each year. If you wish to lock it in at a later time, you may do so on any policy anniversary.
• You may choose to simply supplement what your group policy already offers and load up your policy with increase options. This will allow you to keep your premium low during residency and still reserve the right to increase it in the future without any medical underwriting.

Oftentimes when practicing veterinary medicine, you are also running your own business.

While individual disability insurance will cover your personal income, it does not cover your business expenses. Therefore, you may need to consider Business Overhead Expense (BOE) Insurance. BOE will cover your business expenses such as payroll, rent, etc… if you are too sick or injured to work.

Additionally, if you are buying into a practice, you may be required to take out a disability policy to cover your loan. There are disability policies available to cover the term of your loan. For instance, if you have a 7 year loan and become disabled in the first year, the policy would pay the lender the remainder of your loan.