Insurance Agents and Brokers in Houston: Risks of Applying for Individual Life and Health Insurance

Insurance Agents and Brokers in Houston

When you go to insurance agents for health insurance in Houston, your policy premium is determined by a number of factors. The most important factors are age, smoking history and previous or current medical conditions. Your occupation will also factor into the equation.

Insurance agents in Houston are willing and eager to sell health and insurance policies. Selling policies is how they earn a living. An agent submits policies to an underwriter who will determine risk factors. The underwriters decide if a policy will be issued, and if so, the price of the premiums.

Insurance agents are considered the most important component in risk analysis of prospective applicants. Insurance agents meet applicants face to face. When filling out the insurance applications insurance agents are able to view applicant reactions. The agent is in a position to determine the honesty of answers given to questions on the application. In addition, the ability to accurately and completely record answers to questions is crucial in making accurate determinations of insurability. Agents must be completely honest in reporting pertinent information.

Underwriters may use "The Medical Information Bureau" (MIB) to determine if a particular applicant will be covered.

Insurance agents in Houston are eager to sell policies but underwriters make final decisions with assistance from the MIB. What is the MIB and how does it affect your insurability?

The MIB is a nonprofit trade association that maintains medical information on applicant's health and life insurance information.

The life and health insurance industry relies on MIB to provide information allowing for accurate underwriting of insurance. MIB is considered an authority in quantifying mortality and underwriting standards. This helps insurance companies improve profitability.

MIB maintains a record on almost everyone who has applied for individual coverage of life, health, critical illness, disability or long-term care insurance within the past seven years. Close to 500 insurance companies submit information to the MIB so if you've applied for any of these types of policies recently, MIB will have a file on you.

MIB data is reported to member companies in code. The database contains no details about the individuals. The purpose of the database is to alert companies to information obtained and reported by a member company of an applicant's medical problem or work related risk. Underwriters use MIB information to compare it with information in the prospective candidate's application. Should the MIB file contain a code for a condition that is not listed on the application, the underwriter would then question the applicant more specifically about that condition.

The MIB also tracks the number of times information has been requested on an individual in the previous two years. This report is called the Insurance Activity Index (IAI) and is used to pinpoint people who replace insurance policies frequently. The MIB also detects individuals who are accruing a number of insurance policies in small amounts. This situation has occurred in criminal attempts for "murder for profit."