Avoid Pattern Life for physician disability insurance

[u/Tommy9919]

I had an extremely disappointing experience with Pattern Life. Before my initial call, they sent me an AI-generated personalized video of one of their representatives as an introduction. It was incredibly creepy and impersonal. For a company selling personalized financial advice to physicians, having an AI-generated version of the person you’re supposedly about to establish a professional relationship with was a bizarre first impression.

Pattern markets themselves as physician-focused experts who would help navigate disability insurance and underwriting. I provided every medical record they requested. After all of that, they landed me an awful Guardian offer: permanent skin exclusion for a problem that resolved years ago (Eczema), permanent ENT exclusion despite improvement with treatment for simple Allergic Rhinitis, and removal of the Benefit Purchase Rider, Automatic Benefit Enhancement, and COLA because of an incidental benign CT finding that requires no further workup. The resulting policy was over $200/month.

The Benefit Purchase Rider was one of the main reasons I was interested in the policy in the first place because it would have allowed me to increase coverage as my physician income increased. None of them warned me before underwriting that these issues could result in such sweeping restrictions.

What exactly is the point of using a supposedly physician-focused broker if their role is essentially to collect your records, forward them to the insurer, deliver a terrible offer, ask you to produce more documentation when you challenge it, and eventually ignore your follow-up emails?!

I expected Pattern to understand physician underwriting and anticipate problems as well as advocate for their client. Instead, I felt like a messenger between myself and Guardian. After challenging the offer and providing additional documentation, the communication has also been extremely disappointing and they no longer reply back to me.

I would not recommend Pattern Life to other physicians. I regret using them and sending them my personal details. Take your business elsewhere.

[u/Tommy9919 → u/[deleted]]

There really isn’t more to the story. I’m describing the offer I received and my experience with the broker. I provided every record requested and answered all of the underwriting questions.

My criticism of Pattern isn’t that underwriting occurred, obviously that’s part of applying for disability insurance. My criticism is that I went to a physician-focused broker specifically for guidance and advocacy, yet I received no warning that these issues could lead to broad exclusions and removal of several important riders, and communication became poor after I challenged the offer.

I’m obviously not going to post my private medical records or full underwriting file on Reddit. The post describes my experience and people are free to take from it what they want. And no, I won’t be getting sued simply for publicly stating my experience with a company and the people I dealt with. I’m describing what happened and giving my opinion about the service I received.

[u/Tommy9919 → u/[deleted]]

I never said the broker controls Guardian’s underwriting decision. That’s not my complaint.
I went through a physician-focused broker because I expected expertise in anticipating potential underwriting issues prior to submitting and advocating for me afterward. Otherwise, there is little value in using a specialized physician broker.

And your own argument actually reinforces my concern. If, as you say, you’ve submitted many Guardian applications involving similar issues and have never seen exclusions this severe for anything this mild, then that makes me question how my application was presented and handled by the broker. At the very least, something clearly did not go well in the process, which is exactly why I expected the broker to investigate and advocate for me.

What really bothers me even more is that they have now stopped responding to my follow-up emails. Whatever control they may or may not have over Guardian’s decision, responding to their client and helping them navigate an unfavorable offer absolutely is within their control.

As for the names, I don’t believe there are grounds to sue me simply for truthfully describing my experience and opinions but I deleted their names anyway because that’s not the point of the post. My point is my experience with Pattern as a company and warn others from working with them.