Disability insurance

A new workplace campaign from Employers' Coalition and the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health aims to help employers reduce the stigma of depression and help avoid costly disability claims.

Companies cannot deny an employee disability benefits based on their ability to perform a job that only exists “in theory,” a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

In what can be viewed as a victory for plan sponsors, the Supreme Court ruled that statute of limitation periods written into plan documents are valid, as long as those periods are “reasonable.”

While carolers may chant joyfully about the holidays being “the most wonderful time of the year,” many workers find themselves singing the blues during the winter months. One in 10 people will experience depression at some time in their lives, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This not only inflicts suffering on individuals and families, it costs employers $44 billion annually in lost productivity.

On November 18, 2010, Julie Heimeshoff filed her lawsuit against Hartford and Wal-Mart, claiming that defendants had violated ERISA by failing to provide long-term disability benefits.

The average American registered an insurance shortfall of $320,000. The gap has widened substantially for Gen Xers since the financial crisis.

Consumers are likely to turn to their spouses, co-workers and parents for help with benefits decisions – in part because those decisions can affect them, too, and in part because those are the people to whom they most relate.

These plans hold appeal in an unpredictable economy but must be well-designed to avoid employee dissatisfaction.

About 30% of U.S. households lack life insurance, according to industry group Limra.

Supplemental disability income plans are so mainstream today they're thought of as plain vanilla. That’s all well and good until the other shoe falls. And it often does. When employers experience problems with existing voluntary disability plans, most of these issues can be traced back to when the plan was originally designed.

During the last three years, 44% of those questioned say that 10% or fewer of their current clients had asked about possible life insurance strategies.

As more companies embrace consumer-driven health care models and prepare for the full implementation of health care reform, employees need voluntary benefits more than ever. This chart pack includes the latest data on voluntary benefits from the Aflac WorkForces Report and UBA’s Ancillary Products Survey.

Private disability insurance gets employees back to work more consistently than public programs yet the industry still struggles to get employees enrolled in the benefit.

As more companies embrace consumer-driven health care models and prepare for the full implementation of health care reform, employees need voluntary benefits more than ever. This chart pack includes the latest data on voluntary benefits from the Aflac WorkForces Report and UBA’s Ancillary Products Survey.

More than a third of Americans say they don’t feel financially secure, according to a survey from Unum. Moreover, the number of those who feel “not at all secure” is up from the last year. Women, meanwhile, feel more financially insecure than men.

In an advance copy of Disability Divide: Employer Study provided to EBN, only 26% of HR professionals surveyed believe employees feel it’s very important to prepare for a disability; the same amount thinks employees are in fact properly prepared to withstand a disabling event.

Two new insurance products aim to raise employee awareness about retirement planning and disability.

In 2012, banks sold $1.6 billion in life insurance premium, the second-highest annual production level in the history of the bank channel. The banks’ record year was 2010, when the channel sold $1.8 billion in life insurance.

Women and younger workers are particularly likely to favor customizable voluntary benefits, according to a TNS Omnibus survey.

Disability insurance experts with Guardian Life Insurance Company have developed an index for measuring and predicting the success of companies’ absence management programs in conjunction with their short-term and long-term disability programs.