Group LTD stops
where executive
income begins.
A long-term disability plan that replaces 60% of pay sounds generous until you apply the monthly cap. For a $400,000 executive it can mean 30% of income, before tax, with the bonus left out entirely. Waugh Agency builds the supplemental individual disability layer that sits on top — including multi-life plans that bundle three or more executives for better pricing and easier underwriting.
The higher the pay, the thinner the protection.
Group long-term disability is priced and designed around the median employee. That works well at $70,000. At $400,000 it quietly inverts: the people carrying the most financial obligation end up with the smallest share of their income insured. Benefits people call it reverse discrimination, and it is almost always accidental — a cap set years ago that nobody has revisited since the executive team's compensation doubled.
Four separate mechanisms are doing the damage at the same time. Each one is defensible on its own. Stacked, they turn a 60% plan into something closer to 20%.
The monthly cap does most of the damage
Group LTD plans typically promise 60% of pay, then cap the benefit somewhere between $6,000 and $15,000 a month, with $10,000 a common landing spot. A $400,000 executive needs $20,000 a month to hit that 60%. The cap pays half of it. At $700,000 the cap pays a fifth. The percentage in the benefit booklet stopped describing the plan a long time ago.
Variable pay usually is not covered at all
In the large majority of group LTD contracts — on the order of three-quarters to four-fifths — covered earnings means base salary. Bonus, commission, partnership draws and K-1 distributions are outside the definition. For a sales leader, a producer, a managing director or a professional-services partner, that excluded portion is frequently the larger half of total compensation.
If the employer paid the premium, the benefit is taxed
Employer-paid disability benefits arrive as ordinary income. An executive in a 40% combined bracket collecting a 60% benefit is really seeing about 36% of pre-disability income. An individual policy funded with after-tax personal dollars pays its benefit income-tax-free, which is why the supplemental layer often does more work per premium dollar than the group plan underneath it.
The definition of disability is not the one they think they have
Most group LTD contracts pay on an own-occupation basis for 24 months, then switch to any-occupation. A surgeon who can no longer operate but can consult, or a CFO who can no longer travel but can teach, may find the benefit ends at month 25. A true own-occupation individual policy keeps paying. This is the single most consequential difference between the two layers, and the one least often read.
Three kinds of income protection. One point of contact.
This is individual coverage, not group coverage — individually owned, individually underwritten policies, arranged at the employer level so the pricing and the underwriting behave like a group.
Executive Carve-Out & Multi-Life IDI
Supplemental individual disability stacked on top of the group LTD plan, so total protection reaches 65–75% of real compensation instead of stopping at the cap.
- Multi-life discounted pricing from three lives
- Guaranteed Standard Issue — little or no medical underwriting
- Bonus and commission brought into covered earnings
- Employer-paid, voluntary, or §162 executive bonus funding
- Non-cancelable, guaranteed renewable, fully portable
- Coordinated with group life and the existing LTD contract
Business-Owned Disability Protection
Policies the company owns, on the people the company cannot afford to lose. Different objective entirely — these protect the balance sheet, not the paycheck.
- Key person disability — benefit paid to the business
- Business overhead expense for rent, payroll and fixed costs
- Disability buy-sell funding for partner and shareholder agreements
- Loan indemnification and contractual obligation coverage
- Premium deductibility and benefit taxation reviewed with your CPA
- Owner-only and closely held companies
High Net Worth & High-Limit Cases
When compensation runs past what the traditional carriers will issue, the answer is a second market layered above them — not a smaller policy.
- Excess and high-limit DI through Lloyd's-backed markets
- Monthly benefits reaching six figures on qualifying cases
- Physicians, attorneys, partners, producers and founders
- Retirement contribution protection — the plan funding, not just the salary
- Executives working or living outside the United States
- Reviewed alongside individual life and estate planning
Supplemental, not a replacement.
This is the question every CFO asks first, and the answer is that the individual layer is designed to sit on top of the group plan rather than compete with it. Carriers set an issue and participation limit — the total monthly benefit they will allow from all sources combined — then write the individual policy up to that ceiling with the group LTD already counted. Keep the group plan. Insure what it leaves behind.
A plan that replaces 60% of the first $200,000 and none of the next $300,000 is not a 60% plan. It is a 24% plan with good marketing.
Three executives changes the price. Five changes the underwriting.
The reason companies bundle executives rather than sending them out one at a time is that carriers reward volume in two distinct ways, and the thresholds are low enough that most employers qualify without realising it.
Every policy is still individually owned. The employer's role is to define the class, sponsor the enrollment and — if it chooses — pay for it. Nothing here converts to group coverage, which is precisely why the own-occupation definition and the portability survive.
Census, compensation and the existing contract
We read the current LTD certificate first — the covered earnings definition, the cap, the offset language, the own-occupation period. Then we map it against real total compensation, W-2 plus bonus plus K-1. The gap is usually a specific dollar figure per executive, and it is usually larger than anyone expected.
Define the eligible class
By title, compensation band, years of service, or ownership percentage. Because these are individual policies rather than an ERISA welfare plan benefit, an employer can cover its five highest-paid people and no one else — the nondiscrimination constraints that apply to group medical do not apply the same way here.
Trigger the multi-life discount
Most carriers treat three or more applications from the same employer, submitted within a six-month window, as a multi-life case. The Standard discounts 10% on that basis and extends it to two lives where each applicant owns at least 20% of the business. Principal prices multi-life on a unisex basis worth roughly 20%, which is a materially larger saving for female executives. Ameritas, Guardian, Unum and MassMutual each run their own version.
Test for Guaranteed Standard Issue
At five or more key employees earning roughly $75,000 and up, in favourable occupation classes, with full participation of the defined class and a short actively-at-work history, carriers will issue without medical underwriting. Principal, Guardian's Berkshire Life and MetLife's executive benefits arm all write on this basis. For an executive with a health history, GSI is not a discount — it is the difference between coverage and a decline.
Choose the funding, then enroll it properly
Employer-paid, voluntary payroll-deducted, or a §162 executive bonus where the company grosses up the premium and the executive owns the policy outright. Each has a different tax result for premium and benefit, so we model all three with your CPA before anyone signs. Enrollment and ongoing eligibility run through Employee Navigator, alongside the rest of the benefits package.
If one of these describes your company, it is worth an hour.
Most of these conversations start the same way — someone finally reads the LTD certificate, or a competitor offers a candidate something the company cannot match.
The leadership team above the cap
Three to fifteen executives earning $250,000 and up, all of them sitting on the same $10,000 monthly ceiling. The cleanest multi-life case there is, and usually the cheapest per dollar of benefit.
The commission-driven earner
Producers, sales leadership, mortgage originators, investment advisors. When 70% of the W-2 is variable and the LTD plan only sees base, the plan is protecting the smaller number.
The professional practice
Physician groups, dental practices, law firm partners, engineering and architecture firms. High income, specific-specialty risk, and a partnership agreement that assumes everyone keeps working.
The founder whose company is the asset
If you stop working for eighteen months, does the business survive? Overhead expense keeps the lights on, key person coverage buys time, and a disability buy-out funds the exit if it comes to that.
The company losing candidates on benefits
A funded executive disability program is a line item in an offer letter that a larger competitor often cannot match, because most of them have never looked past the group plan either.
The executive already at the issue limit
Compensation past roughly $500,000 runs into the traditional carriers' ceilings. Excess coverage through Lloyd's-backed markets layers above them, and is routine work rather than an exception.
Rooted in the Northeast. Licensed nationwide.
Executive disability cases cluster where the compensation does. Ours run through Boston and the 128 corridor, Andover and the Merrimack Valley, Worcester and Western Massachusetts, down into Connecticut, across New York City and all five boroughs, Long Island, New Jersey and Philadelphia, plus New Hampshire and Maine. Financial services, professional practices, life sciences, construction and manufacturing — the industries where the gap between group LTD and real compensation is widest.
Beyond the Northeast we serve clients in all 50 states, directly where we are licensed and through trusted affiliates elsewhere. A leadership team split across four states is an ordinary case, not a complication.
Independent, and not owned by a carrier
There is no house policy we are expected to place. We quote the individual disability market broadly — Guardian and its Berkshire Life arm, Principal, The Standard, Ameritas, Unum, MassMutual, MetLife's executive benefits platform for guaranteed issue, and Lloyd's-backed markets when the limits run out. More on our about page.
We already know your group plan
Waugh Agency is a group health and compliance shop first. That means the LTD certificate, the §125 plan document, the ERISA wrap and the census are already in front of us. The executive layer gets designed against what you actually have, not against assumptions.
Tech-forward, including the enrollment
We provide the Employee Navigator benefits and HR platform to eligible client groups at no cost — the agency absorbs the subscription. AI-assisted plan building, automated compliance tracking, online enrollment and 600+ carrier, payroll and TPA integrations. Employee Navigator acquired Ease in 2023, and through 2026 we are moving every client onto the modern portal.
Reviewed every year, not filed away
Compensation moves. Issue limits move. An executive who was fully covered at $300,000 is not at $600,000, and the time to find out is at the annual review rather than at claim. We also revisit the group life schedule at the same time, since the same cap logic applies there.
Send us the LTD certificate and a compensation range.
That is enough for us to show you the gap in dollars per executive, and what closing it would cost. Submit the form and a licensed specialist will be in touch within one business day — or call and we will read the certificate together on the phone.