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Ethos Life Insurance Policy Help

Beneficiary changes, card payments that failed, lapse notices, and reviews of term coverage bought online

Have an Ethos policy? A licensed agent can review it with you by phone.

Ethos sells life insurance online, and most of what it sells is term life insurance, which covers a set number of years. The application is usually filled out on a phone or a computer, often without a medical exam, and the policy documents arrive by email. That is quick and convenient, but it also means nobody sat down with you and went through the contract. So when a payment fails, a family situation changes or the end of the term comes into view, people are often unsure what their policy actually says, or even which insurance company stands behind it.

Common reasons people call about an Ethos policy

• Working out who actually insures you. Ethos sells the policy and handles much of the paperwork online, but a separate insurance company issues the contract. Knowing that company's name matters for a beneficiary change and, later, for a claim.
• Beneficiary changes. A marriage, a divorce, a new child, or a name typed in quickly during an online application and never checked again. A change only counts once it has been recorded by whoever services the policy.
• A card payment that failed. Ethos policies are generally paid by an automatic monthly charge to a card or bank account. A card that expires or gets replaced after fraud can stop the payment, and the email that follows is easy to miss.
• A lapse notice. A message saying the policy has lapsed or is about to. Some contracts allow a lapsed policy to be put back in force under stated conditions, and what that takes depends on the contract and how much time has passed.
• A term that is getting close to its end date. Term life insurance covers a set number of years. What, if anything, the contract allows when that period ends is written in the policy, and it is worth reading before the date rather than after it.
• A policy that belonged to someone who has died. A family member who knows there was coverage bought online but cannot find any paper copy, or who is named as beneficiary and is not sure where to start.
• Coverage that no longer fits. The loan it was bought to protect is paid off, the household has changed, or the monthly charge feels heavier than it did when the application was approved.

What to have ready before you call

• The full legal name of the person insured, including any earlier name
• The approximate year the policy was bought, even if that is only a rough guess
• Any emails, letters or policy documents you have kept, including ones you never opened
• The name of the insurance company printed on the policy documents, if you can find it
• Who you believe is named as beneficiary, and your relationship to the person insured

If you have almost none of that, call anyway. A name and a rough year is often enough to work out what to ask for and in what order. Nobody needs a Social Security number to answer a general question about how something works.

Whose name is on the policy

Ethos Technologies Inc. describes itself as a licensed producer and third-party administrator. In plain terms, it sells the coverage and helps run the account, while a separate insurance company issues the policy and is the one that pays a claim. The issuing company is named on your policy documents.

Ethos lists several issuing companies on its own website, including Banner Life Insurance Company, Ameritas Life Insurance Corp., CMFG Life Insurance Company and MEMBERS Life Insurance Company under the TruStage name, Protective Life Insurance Company, and North American Company for Life and Health Insurance. Which one applies depends on the product and when it was bought. Some policies are serviced through Ethos, and others are handled directly by the issuing company, so the documents are the place to check before you call anyone.

If you are named as a beneficiary, the claim is made to the issuing insurance company. Having its full legal name ready saves time at a moment when nobody wants extra steps.

Before you cancel or replace anything

Canceling an online policy can take only a few minutes, and it is permanent. A new policy is priced on today's age and today's health, so buying the same coverage again usually costs more, and if health has changed it may not be available at all. That gets overlooked when an automatic monthly charge starts to look like one more subscription to trim.

A replacement policy also generally starts a fresh period during which the insurer can review the application if a claim comes early. The policy you already hold may include terms, such as a conversion option, that a new one would not. None of this means a policy that no longer fits has to be kept. It means the comparison should be made on more than the monthly cost.

There may be a middle path. Depending on the contract, it can sometimes be possible to lower the amount of coverage for a lower premium. Whether that applies to your policy is a question for the licensed independent agent, who can look at the real contract rather than the general case. Sometimes the honest answer is that what you already have is the better deal, and an independent agent has no reason to avoid saying so.

Questions people ask