Top carriers for Executives
All five carriers below can be written as true own-occupation for most professions. Guardian and Ameritas build it into the base definition, MassMutual and Principal deliver it through their own-occupation rider or definition, and at The Standard it comes through a rider whose availability depends on your occupation class. Your optimal carrier depends on your specific specialty, income structure, and state. We compare all five side-by-side in every analysis.
| Carrier | Product | AM Best rating | Contract strength |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Provider Choice | A++ (Superior) | Strongest contract of the five, in our view |
 | Platinum Advantage | A (Excellent) | Contract clarity |
 | Income Protector | A+ (Superior) | Most flexible underwriting in our experience; deep rider menu |
 | Radius Choice | A++ (Superior) | Mutual-company dividends; billing-code own-occ |
 | DInamic Cornerstone | A (Excellent) | Competitive pricing; highest BOE limit of the carriers we place |
Provider Choice
- AM Best
- A++ (Superior)
- Strength
- Strongest contract of the five, in our view
Radius Choice
- AM Best
- A++ (Superior)
- Strength
- Mutual-company dividends; billing-code own-occ
Income Protector
- AM Best
- A+ (Superior)
- Strength
- Most flexible underwriting in our experience; deep rider menu
Platinum Advantage
- AM Best
- A (Excellent)
- Strength
- Contract clarity
DInamic Cornerstone
- AM Best
- A (Excellent)
- Strength
- Competitive pricing; highest BOE limit of the carriers we place
Get a comparison of all five carriers tailored to your specialty
Get a Quote ComparisonWhy are executives underinsured by their own benefits package?
Executives are underinsured because employer group long-term disability generally insures base salary and caps the monthly benefit, commonly somewhere in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Those two features are unremarkable for an employee whose pay is mostly salary. For an executive paid in base, bonus, and equity, they combine into a gap that widens with every promotion.
Work the arithmetic on an illustrative $600,000 package split between a $250,000 base and $350,000 of bonus and vested equity. A plan covering 60% of base salary, a common design, produces $150,000 a year on paper, while a $15,000 monthly cap would allow $180,000, so the binding constraint here is the covered-earnings definition rather than the cap. Nearly 60% of the compensation was never in the calculation.
Individual coverage is underwritten differently. Carriers generally size the benefit to total earned income once it has been paid and documented, which brings documented bonus and vested equity into the figure. The odds of needing it are not small. Social Security Administration Publication 05-10029 cites studies that put a 20-year-old worker's chance of a disability before full retirement age at 1 in 4, and at executive income levels the dollars riding on that chance are larger.
How do disability carriers classify executives?
Executives commonly land in the best or second-best non-medical class, which is favorable on both price and contract availability. Guardian generally classes corporate executives at 6, its best tier, where the business is financially sound, has existed for five years, and has ten or more full-time employees, the duties are office, managerial, administrative, or technical with 10% or less time on sales or travel, and salary including bonus is at least $75,000 in each of the past two years.
The Standard's guide generally puts executives with management duties at 5A once income has reached $100,000 or more in each of the last two years, and it lists them for its Preferred Occupation Discount of up to 20%. MassMutual currently classes banking executives and officers at 5A/5 on their own row. Other executives generally reach 5A/5 at MassMutual through its executive underwriting program, which requires five years of experience, income of $250,000 or more, a business at least five years old, under 10% manual duties, and under 20% of duties in sales.
For an executive earning $250,000 or more, the carriers' current guides generally support MassMutual 5A/5 through that program, Guardian 6, and The Standard 5A (management duties at $100,000 or more).
Ameritas generally allows 6A for office and consulting duties only, with income over $75,000 and five years of experience at a financially sound company with ten employees. Principal generally allows 6A (5A-Select in California and New York) with income over $100,000 in each of the last two years at a well-established firm. Fund, banking, and trading roles class on separate finance rows, which our finance professionals page lays out carrier by carrier.
Those labels do not transfer between carriers. A 5A at one carrier and a 5A at another sit on different ladders, and one applicant may receive a different class from each of the five, which changes both the premium and whether certain riders are available at all. Our white-collar carrier comparison prices each carrier's ladder from its top class down to 3 or 3A.
What does disability insurance cost an executive?
Across every row and design in the table, an executive's $10,000 monthly benefit costs as little as $130 a month (a 30-year-old man, 180-day wait) and as much as $715 (a 45-year-old woman with inflation protection and a 90-day wait). Those are 2026 list prices on a Texas basis from Seaworthy's 2026 quote study. Each range spans the cheapest and most expensive of the five carriers at the classes above with no discount, and each figure includes true own-occupation, residual (partial) disability benefits, the carriers' increase riders, and payments to age 65.
| Profile | Monthly benefit | 180-day wait | 180-day wait + inflation protection | 90-day wait + inflation protection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male, 30 | $10,000 | $130–$200 | $160–$255 | $190–$295 |
| Female, 30 | $10,000 | $235–$325 | $270–$420 | $320–$490 |
| Male, 35 | $10,000 | $155–$225 | $190–$275 | $225–$325 |
| Female, 35 | $10,000 | $275–$365 | $315–$460 | $375–$540 |
| Male, 45 | $10,000 | $210–$315 | $240–$365 | $285–$430 |
| Female, 45 | $10,000 | $380–$520 | $430–$610 | $505–$715 |
Lowest to highest carrier, monthly, 2026 list price, Texas basis. Figures include residual coverage, the no-cost increase riders, and the own-occupation rider at carriers that sell one separately. They exclude the catastrophic disability rider, and inflation protection appears only where a column says so.
Set that against the illustrative $600,000 package above. The $10,000 row is the table's pricing basis, not a benefit sized for that package, and it works out to $120,000 a year of replacement income.
A 35-year-old man pays $155 to $225 a month for it on a 180-day wait. Inflation protection plus a 90-day wait lifts his range to $225 to $325. A 35-year-old woman pays $275 to $365 for the 180-day version.
The study's August 2026 illustrations were run at ages 28, 35, and 45 and at $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000 of monthly benefit, so the age-30 rows are interpolated. Female figures apply the female-to-male ratio measured at each carrier. The 180-day columns are 85% of the 90-day illustrations.
The classes assume $250,000 or more of income and that each carrier's conditions (years of experience, company age and size, office-based duties, and income) are met. Below income thresholds that run from $75,000 to $250,000 depending on the carrier, several carriers drop an executive to a lower class and a higher price.
A catastrophic disability rider is left out here, though our white-collar carrier comparison prices it into its full-rider packages, which is why that page shows higher numbers. Where you live, your health record, and any employer or association discount will change the premium.
Do carriers count an executive's bonus and equity?
Yes, once it has been paid out and documented, because carriers generally underwrite earned income rather than promised pay. In practice that generally means base salary, documented bonus, and vested equity that appears as W-2 wages. Vesting on a steady, established pattern is typically credited. Unvested grants and unexercised options generally are not, because they have not yet produced income a carrier can verify.
The practical consequence is that two executives with identical headline compensation can be offered different benefits, depending on how much of the package has landed on a tax return and how consistent the pattern looks. Executives with equity-weighted pay should expect the documentation stage to matter more than the application form suggests. The full mechanics are covered in our RSU and equity compensation guide, which applies to any equity-compensated professional rather than to technology alone.
How much disability coverage can an executive buy?
An executive can typically insure well under half of income at the top of the range, because carrier issue and participation limits are not a flat percentage of pay and the replaceable share falls as pay climbs. On current carrier issue and participation limits, a $300,000 earner can insure roughly $13,300 a month, about 53% of income, and a $500,000 earner roughly $18,000, about 43%.
In our placement experience a single carrier will typically issue around $20,000 a month for a high earner, and as much as roughly $30,000 for some occupations, depending on occupation, income, and state. Larger totals are generally built by combining carriers. The Standard allows an applicant already at maximum issue and participation to apply for Lloyd's of London coverage without reducing the Platinum Advantage benefit, which matters at the highest income levels.
MassMutual also runs a program built specifically for this range. Executive Select opens at incomes around $800,000 and can cover up to roughly 50% of income where a group long-term disability plan sits underneath it, and roughly 25% without one. Its monthly maximum of $60,000, for the most favorably classed professionals, applies at incomes above that entry point, since 50% of $800,000 is about $33,300 a month.
It excludes medical and dental occupations, which puts executives and other non-medical professionals at the center of it, and it is not available in every state, including California and Florida. Fit is confirmed case by case.
Why does the own-occupation definition matter more at the top of the pay scale?
It matters more because an executive at $500,000 and up is already replacing well under half of prior income, so the right to rebuild earnings elsewhere without losing the benefit is worth more.
A true own-occupation policy keeps paying the full benefit when you start earning in a new line of work, with no offset against those earnings, so an executive who can no longer run an operating business but can consult, teach, or sit on boards keeps both the benefit and the new income. A modified definition withdraws the benefit at exactly the point a high earner begins rebuilding.
Each of the five carriers we place can write true own-occupation for most professions, but they deliver it differently, and at The Standard the availability depends on occupation class. The contract-by-contract detail is in our own-occupation comparison across the top carriers.
What happens to an executive's coverage after a job change?
Group long-term disability ends with the employment that provided it. The next employer's plan arrives with a different definition, a different cap, and its own eligibility terms, and a move into consulting, board work, or an operating role at a private company may come with no plan at all. An individually owned policy moves through all of it unchanged, which is usually the practical argument for owning coverage rather than relying on whichever plan happens to be in force.
A future increase option raises the benefit alongside compensation, and each increase skips medical underwriting. For an executive on a rising compensation curve, that option is often worth more over a career than the starting benefit amount, because it locks in the right to buy more coverage while health is still a non-issue.