Disability Insurance: The Difference Between Any Occupation, Regular Occupation, & Own Occupation

Two weeks ago we talked about the importance of maintaining stability in the system upon which disability insurance is built. Disability insurance is important for self employed people in any occupation, but the rules are specific for each individual case.

Are we making sense yet? Ok, try this.

Let’s say you own and operate your own landscape architecture business. Your work requires you to travel to residential and commercial spaces to implement beautiful outdoor designs for all your unique customers.

This is a career that requires physical labour on a daily basis.

Now, and I apologize for this, but imagine an accident that steals your ability to do your job. A car accident. Damage to your hand. A serious spinal cord injury. At this point, it’s crucial to know within which circumstances you’re considered disabled under your policy. To start, we need to know if your policy covers you for your Own Occupation, Regular Occupation, or Any Occupation. 

Own Occupation

When it comes to the Own Occupation definition, this states you’re disabled if you cannot do your specific job, the one you were doing before you were injured or disabled. This is the best definition under disability insurance, and therefore comes with the higher premium costs.

Any Occupation

You’re under an Any Occupation disability definition if you’re unable to work in a job that’s reasonably suited to you based on your previous skills, age, and education. So, if you’ve lost the use of your hands, you might still be able to work in the landscape architecture field in an administrative or management role. In this case, you would not be considered disabled.   

Regular Occupation

So what’s Regular Occupation? It’s a bit of an in-betweener. You’re considered disabled if you can’t do the important parts of your specific job. It’s not as strict as Own Occupation, but not as open ended as Any Occupation.

Partial or Residual Disability

What if you’re hurt or ill but can do some of your job? So, say you can still work a couple days a week or you can do part-time support work. Disability policies usually want you to be Totally Disabled. Sounds mean, right? Well, what this means is that any part-time work or reduced-pay work can disqualify you from receiving the disability benefit. This is when you need to consider adding a partial or residual disability rider to your policy. A residual rider gives you the flexibility to do partial work or reduced duty, earn some income, and still receive some disability benefit.

It’s so important for our customers to understand exactly what they’ll be covered for in the event of an accident or an illness. Too often people are surprised when something happens and their coverage isn’t what they thought it would be. 

That’s why the process is vital – we meet, I get to know you, and we build a disability insurance plan together so you’re covered the way you want to be covered. 

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This post was written by Marco Faccone