This episode of Cover Your Assets with your host Billy Gwaltney explores the eligibility rules for Guardian’s Guaranteed Standard Issue (GSI) Disability Insurance for residents and fellows, clarifying common misconceptions and providing practical guidance.
Transcript:
(00:01.836)
Welcome to the Cover Your Assets podcast, a show for the physician who understands the importance of protecting everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. If you’re ready to find the peace of mind that only financial security can bring, let’s get started. Here’s your host, Billy Gwaltney. Welcome to today’s episode of the Cover Your Assets podcast. I’m your host, Billy Gwaltney, and as always, it’s good to be with you.
Today’s topic is what are the eligibility rules for the Guardian Guaranteed Standard Issue or GSI Disability Insurance for residents and fellows. I work with physicians across the country and one of the endorsed brokers for Guardians Guaranteed Standard Issue at a number of residency and fellowship training facilities across the country.
And it is a common question. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about how do you stay eligible, who is eligible, who isn’t eligible for it. And so we’ll cover that today. First, the key to remember is that this is the best coverage on the planet with one of the four top tier carriers that offer the best specialty coverage for physicians. And every now and then a top company will want to increase their growth.
sooner rather than later and one of the easiest ways to do that or quickest ways to do that most effective ways is to remove all of the medical screening required that’s typically required for their best coverage. And that’s what Guardian has done is called GSI, guaranteed standard issue, where they pick certain locations across the country. There’s no rhyme or reason as to how they pick them from a
you know, what would be intuitive for an average person to think about. So they pick these locations and then they say, okay, residents and fellows, if they’re in training here and they meet our guidelines, they can get our best coverage with the best definitions, the true specialty on occupation definition of disability, the enhanced partial benefit, the long-term recovery benefit, the future increase option or benefit increase rider. You ultimately can end up with 15,000 a month of
(02:18.702)
private specialty coverage and they completely waive the medical screening. In order to get this, there are a few things you have to adhere to. One is you have to currently be a resident or fellow at that facility, at that employer, and there’s no negotiating that. You can’t have been a trainee there last year. You can’t be a trainee that’s going to be there next year. It needs to be current. That’s the first thing. The second,
metric is that you cannot have applied elsewhere first. If you have applied for disability insurance with any other insurance carrier, then you are removed from eligibility for the guardian guaranteed standard issue policy. Technically, it goes back five years, I believe, but for most trainees, that means that that five-year window will not pass with you being able to say you haven’t applied in the last five years while you’re still a trainee.
So effectively, if any trainee applies with a different company, they’re just removed from eligibility. You can apply with Guardian and still have access to the guaranteed standard issue disability insurance if you’re working with an endorsed broker. That’s the key. You need to work with someone who has access to the GSI. This is a one-shot deal.
If you apply for the guaranteed standard issue or ask for it and they issue the policy and you don’t sign for it within the allotted time that they typically allow which is usually 30 days or so Then that’s it. You can’t come back and get it later So let’s say you decide in January you want to do it then you get sidetracked you forget and you’re like, well I still have
a year left of training, I’ll revisit it later, you come back in six months and want to get the GSI, you can’t do it. They won’t let you do it. So you get one window and once that window closes, that’s it. Lastly, and this is kind of the one that sneaks up on people, is that there is a knockout question. And the question reads, I wrote it down so that I can read it exactly, have you been continuously at work full-time performing the usual duties of your occupation for the past six months?
(04:43.308)
you want to check yes to that. If you have been out of work, like a day or two here or there for PTO or a sick day or a long weekend, that kind of thing is okay. Usually a week’s vacation would be okay. But if someone takes a month off to leave the country and go somewhere else, or if someone starts maternity leave or someone’s out for surgery and they come back, Guardian
reserves the right to not allow you to access the GSI. And I’ve seen situations where they won’t let you do it. And then in order to able to access it later, that answer needs to be yes. You need to allow six months to have passed since you missed a day. And so if you try to time that toward the end of your graduation, you can back yourself into a corner and not have access to the GSI because there’s not enough time for six months to pass before you graduate.
There is a grace period of 90 days after you graduate to access the GSI, but it is a hard stop at 90 days. So if you do the math on the missing work in the last six months, if someone, let’s say is out on maternity leave and they come back, they graduate in June, they’re technically finished with maternity leave in June.
They will not be able to get the GSI because they’ve got a 90 day grace period and they need six months of not missing work before they can access it. sometimes the GSI can have little bit of walking through a minefield feeling to it. And it’s because they’re waiving all of the medical screening. The only required question is, are you currently disabled? That’s essentially it.
pre-existing conditions, whether it’s diabetes or past cancer or anything, they’re going to fully cover with no medical underwriting. You get the trainee discounts. It’s the best definitions. It’s private, it’s portable, it’s non-cancellable, guaranteed renewable, which means you can walk away at any time, but the insurance company cannot. They can’t increase the rate or cancel the policy. So it is their best coverage. So they reserve the right to
(07:04.033)
to create the rules and guidelines about what it required that you have to meet in order to access the no medical screening component. There’s more to this. Perhaps for your situation, I would be happy to answer it. I went through this fairly quick, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there. So I want to put this out there so you can listen to it. And then if you want to discuss your situation, I would be happy to do that.
Feel free to message me at 704-270-2376. Again, 704-270-2376 and happy to arrange a time to chat. Thank you as always for your time. Thanks for listening to the Cover Your Assets podcast, an odd conduit media production. New episodes drop every two weeks. If you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. For more tips and advice, visit the website and YouTube channel.
Check the show notes for links. Join us next time for another episode dedicated to helping physicians like you get your disability insurance right and protect your way of life.
