Life insurance for federal employees may soon be more expensive

Life Insurance Contracts

Some workers may find that their rates will be rising, but others will be seeing them fall.

Just as federal employees just faced an increase in the premiums that they pay for long term care coverage, they have now discovered that some life insurance rates may also be rising for their policies in 2016.

This latest change in insurance rates will affect a much wider number of people, as many opt out of LTC.

According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), while some people will be seeing a rise in their life insurance rates, there will also be others who will see a decrease in the amount that they pay. Equally, a segment of federal employees will find that their premiums have been essentially unchanged from this year to what they will pay next year. The new rates will become effective as of January.

These new rates will be impacting those who are covered through the Employees Group Life Insurance program.

Life Insurance ContractsThat includes current active employees, as well as retirees under the basic form of insurance coverage and retirees who have add-on forms of coverage. Retired employees who have basic coverage will be seeing an increase in their insurance premiums of about 10 percent. For the additional types of coverage, there will be a mix of increases, decreases, or rates remaining the same, depending on various details about the individual being covered. Primarily, though, it will be age that will decide which direction the premiums will take.

The OPM will be conducting an open enrollment period that will begin in September 2016, at which time the changes will occur. That said, those actual changes won’t become effective until October 2017. That same personnel agency has already announced an increase to the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program, which went into effect as of August 1 without any prior warning provided. That insurance increase impacts only the people who are enrolling for that coverage after that date.

That said, the life insurance changes are expected to have a much wider impact and extensive warning has now been provided to this notably larger group of people.

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