Investment bankers shopping for disability insurance often assume the quote reflects income, covered earnings or medical history. Those factors do play a role. The one that moves the premium more than any of them is occupation class, a carrier’s own rating of how risky a job is, and it applies at every income level.

Classification belongs to each company instead of to the industry, which is why five carriers quoted the identical disability benefit for one applicant at premiums 58 percent apart.

Occupation class sets the premium on an individual policy. A related, separate question is how much of a bonus-heavy paycheck a workplace group plan even counts toward its own benefit, covered in Bonus Pay Excluded from Group Disability Coverage.

Each company maintains its own ladder, names its own tiers and sets its own income thresholds for reaching the top of one. No industry body standardizes any of it, so the same job title can land in a different tier at every carrier.

The spread shows up fastest on a live quote run. A managing director at a large commercial bank in Atlanta, age 46 and earning $1 million a year, already held $35,000 a month of group long term disability coverage through work. He went to all five carriers for the same $10,000 a month individual supplement.

Occupation Class Sets the Premium Before Underwriting Looks at Health

Guardian states the governing principle in its own field underwriting guide, which says occupation classes are determined by an applicant’s job duties, not by title. That reads as a technicality until it reaches a quote.

A title a company never names in its class tables gets sorted by duties and industry instead, and the premium follows the sorting rather than the paycheck.

The ladders themselves diverge. Ameritas tops out at 6A for non-medical occupations, so 6A is the best a banker reaches there.

Principal Financial Group publishes a 6A+ tier above its own 6A, and its home office confirmed this month that 6A+ now opens to anyone earning $250,000 or more in each of the last two years.

MassMutual sorts by income instead, reserving its top professional tier, 5A/5, for applicants above $250,000.

The Standard runs a 5A list of its own and attaches a published Preferred Occupation Discount worth 20 percent to executives and managers of people who earned at least $100,000 in each of the last two years.

Guardian is the outlier on this occupation. Its guide names investment bankers only on a list of financial occupations eligible for standard underwriting consideration, with no class number attached to the title, and its high indemnity program table assigns an executive class 5. The quote came back at class 5.

Five Insurance Carriers Price the Same Disability Benefit 58 Percent Apart

The quotes came back on the same day, for the same $10,000 a month, on the same person. A 20 percent multi-life discount was already in force at his employer, which matters to two of the numbers below.

How Occupation Class Priced the Same $10,000 Monthly Benefit

	Principal	The Standard	Ameritas	MassMutual	Guardian
Monthly premium	$279	$287	$297	$331	$442
Occupation class	6	5A	6A	5A/5	5
Discount applied	Employer multi-life, 20%	Preferred Occupation Discount, 20%	None disclosed	None disclosed	None disclosed

Source: side-by-side quotes run for one applicant, a 46-year-old managing director earning $1 million a year, for a $10,000 monthly individual disability benefit, September 2026.

The distance between the high quote and the low one is $163 a month. That is 58 percent above the cheapest premium on the board, and it repeats every year the policy stays in force.

Nothing in the range traces to blood pressure, a back injury or a family history.

Principal’s number would be lower still today. The $279 was issued at class 6, and the home office confirmed the 6A+ threshold after that quote was run. Rerunning the same case at 6A+ brings it near $250 a month, which moves the best premium on the board another 10 percent.

Multi-Life Discounts Follow the Banker to the Next Employer

Classification sets the opening number. Discount tiers move it again, and the one buyers rarely ask about is the multi-life discount, a rate reduction a carrier applies once three or more employees of one company buy individual coverage through the same broker.

Principal’s guide puts the threshold at three or more employees with a common employer and the discount at up to 20 percent. Once the third policy is issued at a firm, every applicant who follows inherits the same code without negotiating for it.

The part that surprises people is what happens on the way out. Principal describes the coverage it writes this way as fully portable, discount included. A director who moves to a competitor two years later keeps the 20 percent, because the reduction is written into the contract and not into the employment.

Settle the classification and the discount tiers before the application goes in, not after the first quote comes back. Ask each carrier which class the title reaches, what income and tenure it takes to get there and whether a multi-life code already exists at the employer.

An applicant who runs that check first is choosing among five premiums for one benefit. An applicant who skips it accepts whichever number the first company happened to return, and on a $1 million salary that is close to $2,000 a year for as long as the policy stays in force.