238. Beyond FEGLI: Life Insurance Options for Federal Employees

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

The FedUpward Podcast, a place for federal employees and friends of feds to find strategies and tactics to navigate everyday problems.

Love Rutledge (0:17)

And now, a quick word from our sponsor.

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Here's to those who live the life of service, to those giving all of who they are, wherever they are.

Civilian federal employees whose commitment goes above and beyond. Duty bound and honor led. Forever upholding a timeless ideal. Where for you and your family, no matter how long or how long ago you served. Exclusive life insurance for current and former feds since 1943

Love Rutledge (0:49)

Hi folks, this is Love Rutledge, host of the FedUpward Podcast, welcoming back the team from Waepa. They are one of the amazing sponsors of the FedUpward Podcast, and I hope you will give them all the love by going to their website and checking out their offerings.

I have Tony Zerante here. He is the Chief Strategy Officer and has been with Waepa for more than 25 years. Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony Zerante (1:15)

Thank you for having me, Love. Happy to be here today.

Love Rutledge (1:18)

You guys have a lot of exciting things going on, changes to coverage. So let's just jump right in. And first, let's discuss why it's important to review insurance coverage as a federal employee this time of year.

Tony Zerante (1:33)

Yeah, so great. Thank you for the question there.

It's very ironic. You know, we're doing this on September 1st and September 1st is kicking off Life Insurance Awareness Month in the United States, believe it or not. I know that's very exciting and on everybody's calendar, but it is very important to review your, you know, all of your insurance, life insurance in particular on an annual basis. We find a lot of our members tend to do that around the health open season for the federal government, you know, in early mid November. But it's always a great opportunity to take a look at what your needs.

Frequently, as you get through your, you know, your work, your true working years, if you're starting a family, if you're buying a home or switching homes or anything of that nature, it is always a great idea to review. What do you currently have? Reconfirm, who are your beneficiaries? You know, there may be somebody new that has come into your life or somebody, unfortunately, that has moved on. And so you may new adjust with beneficiaries as well. So it's a great time, a great reminder to think about what do I really need and what am I, what is this going to be intended for as well? And that kind of help you hone in on maybe the amount of coverage that you need, that you need or want and then you can make adjustments from there.

Love Rutledge (2:51)

Yeah, great recommendations. I want to make sure people understand why your offerings are interesting and a little different from what they can buy through the federal government and why folks might come to you. Can you address that?

Tony Zerante (3:04)

Yes, absolutely. So Waepa is a, we are a 501C9. We are a true nonprofit that was started in 1943 So we were started initially before the federal government even offered the Fegli program, the life insurance to federal employees and their families. So we tend to look at it as a complimentary.

You can have both Fegli and Waepa, or you could leave the Fegli program and just go with Waepa. Whatever is best for you, we are happy to work with you on that. You can have both coverages with no problems whatsoever. But Waepa really the benefit of our organization is we do screen our applicants.

Not everybody is approved for our insurance, unfortunately. The good news is, though, is our rates are substantially cheaper than the federal government's rates through at least age 59 And in most cases, we are still substantially cheaper at age 60 and above. And that is because of those screening of our applicants and all the work that we do on the back end to keep you for many, many years with us as well. So that's the benefit there. Obviously, we are not offered through the employer. Fegli is the only employer-sponsored life insurance program for federal employees and their families. But we are the largest provider to federal employees in the non-fed space for life insurance and have been for quite a long time, many, many years and decades. We've been providing this service to our members. I think we have now, we've had over 130,000 members in our history. We currently have over 45,000 active insured employees or former employees. And then additionally, we insure spouses and dependent children there as well. So currently we're insuring over 60,000 lives as part of the life insurance program, which is a great benefit to current or former federal employees.