What is The Medical Information Bureau’s Role in Life Insurance?

Did you know that nearly all life insurance applications in North America involve the Medical Information Bureau (MIB)? If you’ve applied for coverage, the MIB likely has a file on you!

The MIB is crucial to the life insurance process, enabling insurers to assess risk and detect potential fraud by individuals who attempt to conceal a high-risk medical condition. While it might sound complex, understanding the MIB and its purpose will make you a more informed consumer.

We’ll explore how the MIB operates, the types of information it holds, and its impact on your life insurance application, including whether it can affect your rates.

The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) represents North America’s leading life insurance companies, providing underwriting risk assessment services to these companies. The MIB report for life insurance provides carriers with information about an applicant’s risk.

Ready to learn more? Let’s dive into how the MIB impacts your life insurance and what steps you can take to ensure your application goes smoothly.

The Medical Information Bureau is a member-owned, nonprofit organization that has been in existence since 1902. MIB member companies include leading life insurance companies across North America.

These companies rely on the MIB to share information that helps them accurately assess risk and detect potential fraud in insurance applications.

99% of individual life insurance policies issued in the U.S. come from MIB member companies. This extensive network ensures a standardized and secure way for life insurance companies to exchange information.

By collaborating with the MIB, member companies benefit from streamlined risk assessment processes and enhanced fraud prevention measures, ensuring fair underwriting practices for consumers and consistency across the industry.

Now that you know who comprises the MIB, let’s examine how this organization operates and its role in life insurance underwriting.

The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) operates an information exchange system for its member insurance companies to assess risks and detect fraud.

Here’s how it works:

• Authorization – When you apply for life, long-term care insurance, final expense, or disability insurance, you’ll sign an authorization form allowing the insurer to share information with the MIB. Without this authorization, your paramed exam will not be scheduled, your application cannot proceed, and your life insurance application will be declined.
• Coding Process – Life insurers use proprietary codes to report underwriting concerns to the MIB. Codes typically stay in the MIB database for seven years. These codes alert other insurers to potential risks discovered during the underwriting process.
• Risk Management – This system safeguards insurers against applicants who may conceal high-risk health conditions, ensuring fair and consistent underwriting practices.

For example, a history of heart conditions or a history of cancer will be recorded in your file, so future employers will be aware of the condition and may inquire about it.

Tobacco use, including cigars, cigarettes, marijuana, and chewing tobacco, is also coded.

Next, we will examine the type of information the MIB collects and how it affects your life insurance application.

Your MIB report contains coded data about your medical history and life insurance application activity. To have an MIB file, you must have applied for individual life insurance (term, universal, or whole life) within the past seven years.

Here’s what you might find in your MIB report:

High-risk medical conditions include heart attacks, prostate cancer, and diabetes.

Activities like private aviation, scuba diving, or adverse driving records.

The report doesn’t specify the type of life insurance you applied for, so it doesn’t know if you applied for policies with living benefits, for example.

It provides insurers with critical details to assess your risk profile.

Important Notes About MIB Reports:

If it has been over seven years since your last application or you have only held group or accidental death insurance, you may not have a MIB file.

MIB files do not contain actual medical records, but instead use coded information to highlight potential risks.

How specific are MIB codes? Here’s an example from a real MIB report.

“Electrocardiogram. Premature contractions. Ventricular. Current or within the first year before application.”

This code indicates that the new insurance company should request the electrocardiogram report for further evaluation.

Take Control of Your MIB Report

Want to know what’s in your MIB file? Continue reading to find out how to get your report.

Requesting your MIB report is free, easy, and essential for ensuring the accuracy of your life insurance file. Here’s how to do it:

• Visit the official MIB website.
• Submit your request online or follow the instructions to request by mail.
• You can request your MIB report every 12 months at no cost.
• The Medical Information Bureau will mail a hard copy to you within a few weeks.

Your report will detail:

• Any coded medical or personal information on file
• A list of insurance companies that have accessed your report
• Details of any inquiries made by insurers.

Why would you request your MIB report?

There are several reasons to request your MIB report, including:

• Unfavorable Underwriting Offers – If an insurance company offers a higher premium or declines your application due to the MIB report, you’ll want to get a copy to verify its accuracy.
• Accuracy Check – Ensure your report doesn’t contain errors or outdated information that could impact future applications.

Proactively requesting your MIB report helps you avoid surprises during the underwriting process.

Errors in your MIB report often originate from mistakes in your medical records. Here’s how to identify and correct them:

Identify the Error
Request a copy of your MIB report and compare it with your medical records to pinpoint discrepancies.

Verify the Source
If you find an error, check your medical records to confirm whether incorrect information was included in your medical records.

Obtain a Correction Letter
Ask your physician to provide a written statement explaining the error. For example, if an incorrect test result was reported, the letter should clarify this.

Step 4: Submit the Correction Letter
Submit the letter to the insurance company that reported the information to MIB. They are responsible for notifying MIB of the error.

Step 5: Follow Up:
Correcting an MIB file can take some time, but ensure you verify the corrected report against the original MIB.

Real Life Example:
Remember when I mentioned the example – “Electrocardiogram. Premature contractions. Ventricular. Current or within the first year before application.”

That was in my file when I applied for life insurance, and it’s one of the reasons I wrote this article.

My doctor’s office inadvertently included an EKG report from another patient in my medical records. When I applied for life insurance, the insurance company saw the EKG but missed that it was for someone else and reported it to MIB.

I had to get a letter from my physician explaining the error. I then had to submit that information to the insurance company I applied to, and they reported it back to the MIB to correct the file.

It took me 3 months from start to finish to get this corrected.

In my experience helping clients, the issue typically starts with their medical records, 99% of the time. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of your medical records to review for errors.

Simply having an MIB file does not negatively affect your underwriting results. Most life insurance applicants have an MIB file due to previous applications. Whether you’ve applied to one company or several, your file is part of the standard process.

When Issues Arise:
Problems arise when applicants fail to be transparent about their history.

For example:
You apply for life insurance and receive an unfavorable underwriting offer due to a health issue or having positive lab results for nicotine, drugs, etc.

When you apply to a new company, you will be asked about prior applications and their outcome. If you withhold this information, the new company will see the MIB, and you may get declined for not being transparent.

This is especially true if your history includes drug or alcohol abuse or tobacco product usage.

Our Advice – Disclose everything, as the insurance company will likely find out. Even if you did manage to conceal the information, you run the risk of the settlement proceeds being withheld from your beneficiaries.

As more companies move towards accelerated underwriting to eliminate paramed exams, companies will become more reliant on MIB and other related services to screen applicants.

When applying for life insurance, the MIB service is a standard part of the process, similar to a paramed exam, prescription history check, or medical record review through services like Human API.

It’s not designed to influence your application positively or negatively. Instead, it serves as a safeguard for life insurance companies, helping them detect fraudulent activity.

If you’ve encountered any issues with MIB, we’re here to help.

See how much you can save with RiskQuoter today!