How it works
A group life portability check quantifies the uncomfortable truth about employer-provided life insurance: it is real coverage with a landlord problem, because the policy belongs to the employer's contract, not to you. The checker totals what your workplace provides — the basic multiple of salary, often employer-paid, plus any voluntary supplement you elect at age-banded rates — and measures it against your family's genuine need from a proper analysis. Two findings usually emerge. First, even while employed, group coverage alone frequently undershoots the need, since two-times salary is a payroll convention rather than a planning number. Second, and more corrosive, is dependency: the share of your family's protection that evaporates with a layoff, a resignation or a retirement. Basic group coverage almost never ports at all. Supplemental voluntary life sometimes ports, but at re-rated premiums that abandon the group discount, and the portability election window is typically thirty-one days after termination — a deadline nobody grieving a job loss is positioned to research. The supplemental premiums tallied until your likely change date frame the alternative: those dollars redirected into an owned level-term policy buy coverage that answers to no HR department, survives every job change, and locks insurability while you are young and healthy. Group life is excellent free money; the error is treating free money as a foundation.
Formula
group coverage = salary x multiple + supplemental | gap = max(0, need - group coverage) | dependency = group coverage / need
Tips
- Enroll in free basic group life every year — declining free coverage is pure loss.
- Treat supplemental elections as bridges, not foundations; their age-banded rates climb every fifth birthday.
- Own at least one personal policy sized to the real need so insurability never depends on employment.
- Mark the thirty-one-day post-termination portability window now — it is the most missed deadline in benefits.
- Recheck the gap at every open enrollment; raises raise the multiple, but rarely the adequacy.
Frequently asked questions
- Is employer-provided life insurance enough?
- Rarely. Two-times salary is a benefits convention, not a family plan — a household with children and a mortgage typically needs several times that, and the coverage vanishes entirely with the job. Group life works best as a free top-up layered over an individually owned policy sized to genuine need.
- Can I keep group life insurance after leaving my job?
- Basic employer-paid coverage almost never ports. Voluntary supplemental coverage often can, but only if elected within a narrow window — typically thirty-one days — and at re-rated premiums reflecting your attained age rather than the group discount, which can mean doubling or worse. Individual term usually undercuts ported group rates substantially.
- How much does supplemental group life really cost?
- Rates are age-banded per thousand of coverage and rise at each five-year bracket — cents in your twenties, meaningfully more by your fifties and sixties. Because pricing resets upward with every bracket while you stay enrolled, long-held supplemental coverage quietly becomes expensive relative to a level term policy bought young.
- Does group life insurance require a medical exam?
- Basic coverage usually guarantees issuance up to a limit, and supplemental amounts under a threshold — often one to three hundred thousand — frequently skip exams during initial enrollment windows. Larger elections trigger evidence of insurability. That easy access is precisely why owning portable coverage before health changes matters.
- What happens to my group life coverage if I'm laid off?
- Coverage terminates with employment, typically the last day of the month. Your rights afterward: the limited portability election on supplemental coverage if offered, conversion of some portion to individual permanent coverage at unattractive rates, and — the practical move — a special enrollment window to buy individual term on the marketplace of insurers competing for exactly this moment.