23rd June 2008
Employees who have had heart attacks now may be covered
Unum, the UK’s leading disability insurer, has announced a series of ground-breaking changes to its medical underwriting approach for Group Income Protection (GIP) schemes.
Most notably, Unum will now consider providing cover for employees who, prior to taking out the insurance, have had a heart attack; a landmark move in the protection industry.
It will also offer cover for people who have had a range of other potentially serious illnesses, such as cancer, paraplegia, back pain and diabetes. Unum’s cover will be particularly valuable to some employees who have previously either not been able to obtain full cover or could not get cover at all. This has been made possible partly due to Unum’s use of the biopsychosocial model in its approach to medical underwriting.
The biopsychosocial model-based application form takes around 20 – 30 minutes to complete and concentrates on attitudes and behaviours that inform Unum of the likelihood of illness or injury causing long-term sickness in an individual. It was first trialled by Unum in 2006 and means that the company is no longer underwriting a diagnosis in isolation and can be more optimistic than most insurers regarding some potentially incapacitating medical conditions.
A further development is that Unum now allows significant benefit changes without underwriting. The new process, named ‘Once and done’, means that for the majority of cases, once Unum has underwritten and accepted the risk it will allow the benefit to change each year on the same terms without further underwriting.
Andrew Potterton, Chief Medical Underwriter, Unum, said:
All of the changes we have made are founded on sensible analysis of our claims experience and the use of the new application form. At Unum we have always placed a great deal of importance on not just going through the motions, but constantly aiming for bold and innovative ways to do things better. As part of this we are continuing to explore other ways to ease the underwriting experience, for example by gathering application data or info by telephone or even in a worksite interview.
An additional benefit of the new application form is that Unum can now get cover in place within just a week of receiving the application form, which is unusually fast for the industry. This is because there are no routine medical evidence requirements, regardless of the salary to be insured.
The changes also mean that Unum will include a bespoke service for senior executives to help facilitate their access to higher levels of benefit. This may include being phoned by Unum’s Chief Medical Underwriter or a senior member of the team, to be talked through the application form, which would allow them to access their full benefit entitlement, often as much as £300,000 per year. Typically, if they provide this much cover at all, insurers require such high earners to attend medical examinations and provide additional medical evidence. This necessitates time out of the office and many end up settling for the easier option of being insured for a much lower Free Cover Limit.
ENDS