Future insurance option (FIO)

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 10, December 2007, Page 534 News
By: Sandie Braid, CEBS

You may have already taken the smart step to get the life insurance protection you need right now. But needs often change—so why not guarantee your ability to increase your coverage later, regardless of changes to your health?
The future insurance option (FIO) is a rider that lets you and your spouse increase your life insurance coverage by $50000 (subject to overall plan maximums) without having to provide proof of good health. 

As long as you are actively at work and under age 50, the FIO gives you and your spouse the option to increase your life insurance coverage within 60 days of one of the following events:

• Marriage or eligible common-law relationship.
• Birth or legal adoption of a child.
• Upon turning age 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, or 50 (if coverage was not increased for either of the above reasons in the previous two years).

The annual cost of this rider is only $30—a small price to pay for such a valuable benefit. To add the future insurance option rider to your life insurance coverage, contact a BCMA insurance administrator:

Lorie Arlitt
604 638-2882
Toll free 1 800 665-2262, ext. 2882
larlitt@bcma.bc.ca

Karen Paul
604 638-2836
Toll free 1 800 665-2262, ext. 2836
kpaul@bcma.bc.ca

—Sandie Braid, CEBS
BCMA Insurance

Sandie Braid, CEBS. Future insurance option (FIO). BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 10, December, 2007, Page(s) 534 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
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For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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