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What Is No Medical Exam Life Insurance?
Types of No Medical Exam Life Insurance
How Does No Medical Exam Life Insurance Work?
Do I Qualify for No Medical Exam Life Insurance?
How to Choose the Right No Medical Exam Life Insurance Provider
Compare No Medical Exam Life Insurance Providers
Pros and Cons of No Medical Exam Life Insurance
How Much Life Insurance Can I Get With No Medical Exam?
Whole vs. Term: Which No Medical Exam Life Insurance?
Whole vs. Term Life Insurance

Life insurance—it’s been on your to-do list for years, right? You’ve been meaning to knock it out but . . . life happens. Well, here’s some good news: These days there’s one less hurdle between you and getting covered.

Over the past few years, some insurance companies have started offering an exam-free life insurance option—and it doesn’t come with sky-high premiums. If you’re under 60 and in the market for a policy worth $2 million or less, you may be able to skip the lab work and apply without a medical exam.

So, if you’ve ever thought, Ugh, I don’t like medical exams, this new flexible option should ease your mind and maybe get you on a path to peace and security for your loved ones! Here’s what you need to know about getting life insurance without a medical exam.

This type of life insurance is an option that doesn’t require you to go through a medical exam to get covered. In certain age groups, customers shopping policies of $2 million or less can sometimes skip the exam completely and still get the most competitive term life rate available. Typically, we’re talking about healthy people. These policies are great if you want to get coverage as soon as possible. And I think that’s cool! But there are some conditions.

Are you guaranteed a no medical exam policy if you fit those criteria? Not necessarily. Even if you feel really healthy and you’re under 60, you’ll still need to answer questions about your medical history and disclose any conditions you have on your term life policy application.

Based on your answers, the insurance company will decide if you still need lab work or medical records to get a policy. Honest and complete answers are a must because if they find you’ve hidden something on your application and you end up dying, your death benefit will most likely be withheld from your beneficiaries. And . . . that’s the whole reason you're getting the insurance in the first place, right? Honesty is the best policy, and it’ll help you get the right policy for you and your family.

Is life insurance with no medical exam sounding pretty sweet? Great! But which one’s for you? Let’s go over the major types of life insurance coverage you can get without doing a medical exam.

Simplified Issue

Who doesn’t love simple? Simplified issue means you can get a policy by answering just a few health questions. And you can get both whole life and term life simplified issue policies, so let’s go over each kind.

Simplified Term Life With No Medical Exam

The name says it all. These simplified term life policies let you get term life insurance (the kind of coverage I always recommend for both price and simplicity), but they don’t require a medical exam. That’s awesome! But even without the medical step, these policies do require applicants to answer a health questionnaire.

Simplified Whole Life With No Medical Exam

Again, the name helps here: You can apply for this policy without a medical exam by answering a health questionnaire. But I don’t recommend whole life coverage at all. Why not? Because whole life insurance (sometimes called permanent life insurance) is one of the worst financial products on the market. It mixes two important jobs—life insurance and investing—and gives you a horrible payoff in both departments. Don’t just skip the medical exam—skip whole life insurance completely.

Guaranteed Issue

Guaranteed issue is another no medical exam option, but the catch is that it’s also one of the most expensive ways to get life insurance. To get a guaranteed issue policy, you get to skip the medical exam and the health questionnaire!

Compare Term Life Insurance Quotes 

But the market for this kind of policy is pretty limited. It’s designed to help people who would otherwise be uninsurable. In addition to the high price, many companies also impose a few basic limits for this type of coverage:

• Age minimum: usually 40 years old
• Age maximum: usually 80 years old
• Coverage limits: typically from $5,000–100,000

Those aren’t hard-and-fast rules, but if you’re in that age range, you could qualify for guaranteed issue.

Now, there’s another wrinkle with this policy type you should know about. Guaranteed issue has what’s called a graded death benefit. What’s it all about? It means if you’re the policyholder and you die shortly after getting the policy—say within three years—your beneficiaries would only get a portion of the full death benefit.

But it’s life insurance coverage, and it has the fewest strings attached of any type. If you’ve been declined for other kinds of life insurance because of health problems, a guaranteed issue policy could get you enough coverage to take care of your final expenses.

Group Life Insurance

Group life insurance is a way to get a decent price on modest coverage through your employer (hence the word group in the name). Coverage amounts are capped pretty low, but it usually won’t require a medical exam.

If no exam and discounted premiums sound good to you, you can opt in at open enrollment time. You can also add supplemental life insurance to your group coverage to make sure you have enough life insurance. (Roughly speaking, you want coverage worth 10–12 times your annual income.) Just be aware that adding more coverage often requires filling out a medical questionnaire.

Accelerated Underwriting

Accelerated underwriting is no med exam coverage with a slightly different underwriting process than you’d see in other coverage types.  Instead of requiring a new medical exam, some companies will accept your prior lab results—if the tests were done within the past six months.

This process could be a great fit for you if you’re a regular at your doctor’s office who’d never dream of missing your annual physical. (Adulting done right!)

Accelerated underwriting can get you fast life insurance coverage without having to do a new exam! That’s awesome.

Remember when I mentioned the lower price point of term life as one of its main attractions compared to whole life? Well, what good is that if you have to pay higher premiums for the no medical version of term life? The good news is, you probably won’t have to!

To be clear, if you go for a term life policy without a medical exam, the convenience of skipping the exam is likely going to mean a slightly higher premium than you’d see with normal term life. But the price should still be pretty affordable—and it’ll sure as heck beat any rate you’d get for a whole life policy.

So, how do these companies decide whether to cover people for life insurance without giving them the normal exam for height, weight and other basic health measures? The answer: technology. Yep! Insurance companies use statistics and algorithms (plus your Medical Information Bureau and prescription history reports) to analyze your questionnaire answers. Those results allow companies to offer the same competitive rates that used to require an exam with one less hurdle to leap.

If you fall into one of the categories below, you could be a great fit for a no medical exam life insurance policy: 

• People who are pretty healthy and don’t have a long medical history
• Busy people who just want coverage fast but don’t want to fool around with appointments and needles (relatable!)
• Young smokers who don’t have any other medical conditions

One way to compare providers is to look at their AM Best rating—AM Best is an agency that rates a company’s ability to pay claims over the long haul. (Just like in school, A-plus is excellent work.) You’ll obviously want to compare prices as you shop too.

I know finding life insurance can feel pretty overwhelming. With all the options out there, picking the right one can feel like finding an honest man in Congress. So, here’s a handy tool and some of the top options for no medical exam life insurance to help you get started.

Protective Life

Protective Life was founded in 1907. Today, they provide life insurance coverage for millions of customers. A medical exam isn’t required for some Preferred Plus applicants.

Lincoln Financial

Since its founding in 1905, Lincoln Financial has covered more than 17 million Americans. A medical exam isn’t required for most Preferred Plus applicants.

Haven

One of the newcomers to life insurance, Haven was founded in 2016. A medical exam isn’t required for any applicant who qualifies.

Now that we’ve gone over the good and the bad, let’s dig into some more details about no medical exam life insurance.

If you qualify for no medical exam life insurance, you can get coverage up to $2 million. That sounds like a lot—and it is. But you’ll need 10–12 times your annual salary in term life insurance to make sure your family can replace your income if something happens to you. So, if you make over $300,000 a year, you’ll need more coverage than a no medical exam policy can provide.

Life insurance with no medical exam used to be more expensive than traditional policies, but not anymore! Both types of policies are pretty much the same price now. The exact monthly payment you’ll get will vary depending on your age, medical history and other factors, though. Once you fill out your application, the insurance company figures out whether they can insure you and how much they’ll charge for your policy.

While I’m on the subject of life insurance, I also need to flesh out the differences between whole and term life insurance. Choosing the right kind is essential for protecting your money and your family.

Keep in mind, with or without a medical screening, term life is always better than whole life. Why? First, term is way cheaper. Second, life insurance has one job—to replace your income if you die. With term life, you’re putting yourself and those you love in the ideal position. Term life will replace your income in case the unthinkable happens—and at a really affordable price.

As for whole life? It’s a major rip-off! It’s not only way pricier than term coverage, but it also mixes in bad investment products with the life insurance. And in the end, it doesn’t do either of those things well. Medical exam or no medical exam, avoid whole life policies.

To show just how bad of a deal whole life is, I did the math. Say you have $260 a month in your budget to pay for life insurance. If you paid $13 a month for a term life policy and invested the other $247 in mutual funds, you’d end up with $2.1 million after 40 years!

On the other hand, if you have a whole life policy instead, you’d be paying $260 a month for your premiums. About $245 of that would go toward the investing part of your whole life policy, but the returns would be way less—only about $179,936 after 40 years. That’s a pretty big difference.

Use a Provider You Can Trust

Getting life insurance just got easier. You now have one less excuse to go ahead and get your family set for life in case something ever happens to you. For a small amount of money per month, you can get coverage that’ll give you peace of mind knowing your family’s protected.

Like I said before, I always recommend RamseyTrusted provider Zander Insurance. The absolute best way to get the right kind of no medical exam life insurance for you and your family is to give Zander a call and talk things over with one of their agents.