Elimination Period: Disability Insurance's Waiting Room (LLQP)
The elimination period is the waiting period between the start of a disability and the date benefit payments begin. Think of it as a deductible measured in time instead of dollars — you absorb the first stretch of lost income yourself.
Common elimination periods are 30, 60, 90, or 120 days. The longer the wait you accept, the lower the premium, because short disabilities — the most common kind — never trigger a payment at all.
Why it matters on the LLQP exam
The Accident & Sickness module tests the elimination period's relationships constantly. Lock these in:
- Elimination period ↑ → premium ↓ — the single most-tested relationship in disability insurance.
- Contrast with the benefit period — the benefit period is how long payments last once they start; the elimination period is how long you wait before they start. Longer benefit period raises premiums; longer elimination period lowers them. Exam questions love flipping these.
- Matching to the client — someone with three months of emergency savings or employer sick leave can safely choose a 90-day elimination period and save premium; someone paycheque-to-paycheque cannot.
- Retroactive qualification — in many individual policies, if disability continues past the elimination period, benefits start from the end of the wait, not from day one.
- Recurring disability — if the same disability returns within a set window (often 6 months), it's usually treated as a continuation — no new elimination period.
Example question
All else being equal, which disability policy has the lowest premium?
- 30-day elimination period, 5-year benefit period
- 90-day elimination period, 5-year benefit period
- 30-day elimination period, to-age-65 benefit period
- 90-day elimination period, to-age-65 benefit period
Answer: B — the longer wait and shorter payout duration both cut the insurer's exposure, so B is cheapest.
See the flip side in benefit period and pricing factors in occupation class, in the accident and sickness hub.