OB/GYN Insurance: Disability, Life, and Umbrella for High Exposure

Start with what the work demands, because the policy has to answer the exact shape of loss this specialty produces. OB/GYN work is lifting, standing, and operating on a call schedule that runs through the night. The disabling events match the work: a back that ends long cases, a hand that ends surgery, a shoulder that ends deliveries. None of those makes a person unable to work at anything. All of them can make a person unable to work at this, at attending income, and the difference is the mortgage, the loans, and the plan. The specifications follow from that shape. A true own occupation definition, so the benefit pays when you cannot practice OB/GYN even if you could earn elsewhere. A partial or residual benefit, because the common case in this specialty is partial for years: the physician who can run clinic and gynecology but cannot take labor call has lost a large share of income without being totally disabled under any definition.

Size the total coverage toward the ceiling carriers issue, about 60 to 70 percent of pre disability income (Medical Economics). On average compensation of $390,000 in the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026, 60 percent is $234,000 a year, because $390,000 times 0.60 is $234,000, and $234,000 divided by twelve is $19,500 a month. At 70 percent the figures are $273,000 a year and $22,750 a month, because $390,000 times 0.70 is $273,000, and $273,000 divided by twelve is $22,750. The individual policy plus any group layer should reach toward that band, with a benefit period to retirement age. Jimmy Turner built his practice and his teaching around this exact coverage problem for physicians, and his page is at Jimmy Turner. The definition is worked in Does an OB/GYN need own occupation disability insurance? the sizing in How much disability insurance does an OB/GYN need? and the framework page is own occupation disability inside the protection stack framework.

The group policy most OB/GYNs actually hold is a floor with four limits, and naming them is the start of the real plan. The benefit is capped at a monthly figure sized for the average employee rather than a physician, so the replacement ratio collapses exactly where income is highest. The definition of disability is the definition in the plan document, and it can shift after an initial period from your occupation toward any occupation the carrier finds reasonable. The coverage is not portable: it ends when the employment ends, which in a specialty of group moves, practice sales, and carrier changes is a live scenario rather than a remote one. And a benefit paid by an employer funded plan is generally taxable income, shrinking it again at the moment it is needed most. None of this makes group coverage worthless. It makes it a foundation that the individual policy stands on.

Heidi carries group only disability as a first year attending, in a household earning about $400,000 with about $280,000 of loans on a forgiveness track. Her case is at Heidi and Spencer. The assessment treats group only as a starting point, not a finished answer, because every limit above applies to her household at full attending exposure. Lisa, eight years in, carries individual own occupation coverage in force, and her case shows the finished version of the same line. The distance between the two households on this one item is the distance between a floor and a plan. The waterfall places coverage fourth, after the full employer match, one month of reserves at the new lifestyle, and credit cards at zero, and in a procedural specialty that placement is not caution. It is accuracy.

The cheapest coverage decision in this specialty is made in residency, when the physician is youngest, healthiest, and least able to imagine needing it. A resident policy with a future increase option locks the right to buy attending sized coverage later without a new medical exam, priced on a training income and a clean health history. Every attending who buys coverage after a diagnosis, an injury, or a chart full of new history wishes the purchase had happened two years earlier, and residency is the last moment when it reliably can. The training purchase is worked in full in What disability insurance should an OB/GYN resident buy? and the resident stage places it inside the training budget on the resident hub.

Training is also when the household learns what it actually holds. A group policy through a residency program ends at graduation. Life coverage through a program, where it exists at all, is a small multiple that was never sized to a household. Reading your own file in training, naming what is missing while the fixes are cheap, and placing the increase option before the health history changes are the three moves this stage asks for. They cost little, they cannot be bought later at any price once the history changes, and they protect the attending income that every other part of the plan assumes will arrive.

Term life is the straightforward placement: level term, twenty or thirty years, sized from the needs of the household rather than the maximum of a group plan. Size it from the mortgage, the children, the loans that survive the borrower, and the years of income being replaced. A household with a partner at home, young children, or a child with lifelong needs sizes up. Group life through an employer is a supplement with the same portability problem as group disability, and it was never sized to your household in the first place. The sizing work is in How much term life insurance does an OB/GYN need?

Lisa is the established example on this hub. Lisa is 41, eight years as an attending, earning about $370,000 in a household of about $550,000 with her husband Mark, two children ages 8 and 5, and a mortgage of about $800,000 on a home of $1,200,000. She carries $2,000,000 of twenty year term life in force. Her case is at Lisa and Mark. Read that figure as a sizing answer, not a rule: it was set against her household income share, her mortgage, and her children's ages, inside the years when the exposure is largest. Heidi, by contrast, carries $750,000 of term in force in a younger household with one child age 2 and a mortgage of about $500,000, and the assessment treats it as a start to revisit as the attending years raise both income and obligations. The method travels even when the number should not: count what the household owes, count what it spends, count the years until the children are grown, and buy level term for that window.

The umbrella policy is the cheapest line in the stack and the one attending households most often leave at zero or at a starter number. It sits over the auto and homeowners liability limits and answers the scenario households in this specialty actually face: a serious auto claim, a teenage driver in time, real assets on the balance sheet, and a judgment that does not care about any of it. The two cases on this hub mark the range. Heidi carries no umbrella coverage at all, in a household with about $100,000 of investable assets, a home, and a toddler. Lisa carries $1,000,000 of umbrella coverage, in a household with investable net worth of about $400,000, a home of $1,200,000, and two children moving toward driving age. Neither figure was set by a formula the episode recites. Both were scored as what they are: an absence, and a start that should grow with the balance sheet it protects.

Review the limit at every stage change, because assets grow and drivers arrive while a starter policy stays where it was bought. The established sizing is worked in How much umbrella insurance does an established OB/GYN need? Coverage sits fourth in the waterfall for every stage of this specialty, before any extra dollar goes to loans beyond minimums or to investing beyond the match, and umbrella is bought inside that step, not after the brokerage account feels comfortable. A high exposure specialty does not get a lower standard for the cheap lines. It gets the same order, executed fully.

Malpractice depth does not live on this page, because in OB/GYN it is large enough to need a page of its own. The premium table by market, occurrence against claims made, the tail commonly priced at 150 to 200 percent of the mature premium, carrier switches and prior acts coverage, patient compensation funds, and the limitations clock that can wait until a child turns 18 are all built in full on the malpractice and tail coverage page. The insurance point to carry from here is narrow: confirm in writing which policy form you hold and whose name is on the tail at every job, and file the answer with the policy. Heidi holds claims made coverage with the tail covered by her employer. Lisa holds employer occurrence coverage, and an entire category of exit cost simply does not exist for her household. The contracts page gives the tail clause its contract treatment, beside call, production, and the covenant.

Medical Economics (disability carriers issue coverage totaling about 60 to 70 percent of pre disability income, accessed October 2026)

Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (OB/GYN average compensation of $390,000, accessed October 2026)

Financial Fellowship, Heidi and Spencer case (group only disability, $750,000 term in force, no umbrella coverage, accessed October 2026)

Financial Fellowship, Lisa and Mark case (individual own occupation disability in force, $2,000,000 term in force, $1,000,000 umbrella coverage, employer occurrence malpractice, accessed October 2026)

Ryan Inman is a retired financial planner who worked with about 500 physician families. He created the Financial Residency podcast (about 3 million downloads) and is no longer affiliated with it. Financial Fellowship is his sole focus. This guide is educational. Last updated October 2026.