Making long-term disability insurance a priority for employers, workers

Benefits brokers spend only a few minutes a year discussing long-term disability insurance with their employer clients, and that means those clients’ employees often are left in the dark about long-term DI and what it can do.

That was the word from Dane Rianhard, principal and cofounder of TriBridge Partners, who spoke on how to approach employers and their workers about long-term DI during the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals annual convention.

“There is so much room to have a discussion on long-term disability with business clients,” Rianhard said. “And it’s good for business.”

To get employer clients to understand long-term DI, a broker first must engage in the conversation, he said.

“Just bringing up the conversation, having an intentional discussion with the employer,” he said. “We’ll often have a discussion with the client about our process. We get into conversations about the difference between “and/or” in the contract and whether the client knows that could mean it could take six months before one of your employees gets paid if they have a claim.”

Employers often don’t know what they would do if an employee suffered a long-term disability, Rianhard said.

“I ask them, ‘What’s your plan if someone who has been with you for awhile gets disabled?’ and they inevitably tell me they would do something ad hoc. They say if it is someone who has been with them for awhile, they would pay them. OK, how long are you going to pay them? And once you do it for one person, that ad hoc agreement basically becomes your long-term disability plan. Someone who has been on the job for three weeks, they’re going to have the same benefit because they have the legal recourse to request it.”

A good presentation on long-term DI with an employer client involves storytelling, Rianhard said. “We guide them through the process of what they are insuring,” he said.

Rianhard said that during open enrollment for workplace benefits, employees often receive an employee benefit guide that has only a few lines describing long-term DI.

“That's it, that's the entire annual conversation about long-term disability with the employees. So culturally, the organization doesn't seem to know that they should care about it.”

Employees often prioritize signing up for group life insurance or short-term disability insurance over long-term DI coverage, Rianhard said, and he believes that is backwards.

“Of those three lines of coverage, I believe long-term disability is the most important one,” he said.

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at Susan.Rupe@innfeedback.com. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan.

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