Long-Term Disability insurance (LTD) has been making headlines lately. According to The Wall Street Journal,
although only 0.5% of federal disability recipients return to work,
nearly 20% of workers with employer-paid LTD do. So with a success rate
40 times higher than that that of the government program, why is it that
nearly 100 million workers don't carry this benefit?
"There's a coverage gap when it comes
to disability, and educating [employees] is going to be important," says
Andrew Sullivan, SVP of Disability and Small Market Business at
Prudential Group Insurance. He adds that worker awareness of their
vulnerability to illness and accidents, and the availability of LTD will
become increasingly widespread as more employers shift to 100%
voluntary coverage.
The trend toward sharing the cost of
coverage between employers and employees or having it paid entirely by
employees depends on the quality of the enrollment support provided. One
way of getting the younger generation of workers enrolled is to shorten
the length of coverage, by letting employees choose how long they want
to be eligible, say for two years, instead of until age 65. This
approach can be especially effective because younger people often don't
believe that they're going to get sick or have any accidents happen to
them.
More and more employers are looking
for reports and analysis of productivity and wellness programs to
provide guidelines on how they can minimize or to prevent
workplace-related disabilities.
According to insurance experts,
widespread implementation of the Affordable Care Act over the next 18
months will have a significant impact on LTD and other voluntary
benefits products.
For more information, please call or e-mail our agency.