Will group insurers remain as insurers or become service providers? Should advisers be consulting on additional services? Paul Avis investigates.
This same period saw a huge increase in the utilisation of our Second Medical Opinion service when it became available to non-insured employees too – growth of more than 300% results.
Another area of growing success is the provision of the in-house services that insurers offer with group income protection. Almost all insurers now offer some form of vocational rehabilitation service, with most looking to engage with employers and employees in the early stages of absence – two to four weeks. The clear ambition is to manage employee absence and find the best possible outcome for all involved, which in most cases has to be a return to work.
From the employer’s perspective, there is a financial cost to sickness absence, not just through statutory sick pay but through the loss of productive, often experienced, employees. The longer the absence continues, the greater the financial cost and the more difficult it can be to rehabilitate the employee back into work.
Employers have clear responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 to make every reasonable effort to rehabilitate employees back into the workplace when a return is possible and it is certainly not acceptable to simply dismiss an employee when they have been off work for a long period.
This can be a daunting task for any employer, which is where the support of rehabilitation consultants can help, by working with the employer and the employee to design realistic, medically endorsed return to work plans.
Effective engagement between employer and insurer not only ensures the smooth transition of productive employees back to the workplace but in doing so can serve as a positive mitigant to the future cost of benefit provision.
There is a strong evidence to suggest that work is generally good for physical and mental health and well-being and many absent employees want to return to work. Rehabilitation consultants work with the employee, their medical practitioner and of course their employer to facilitate a successful return to work.
Where an organisation embraces our early intervention services and fully engages with the concept, it can make a difference. As an example at Canada life only around 20% of cases move into the claims assessment process, with 97% of these accepted.
Feel the benefit
The business benefits achieved through joint working cannot be ignored – reductions in statutory sick pay, the return of valuable employees to the workplace bringing productivity benefits, and compliance with the Equality Act (2010) – it makes perfect sense. In its purest form this is a case management service proposition, not just claims management, but there are real benefits. However, the employer can be reassured that the financial product is still there to pay genuine claims as efficiently as possible.
For employers with little access to occupational health services, particularly true of the small medium enterprise (SME) segment, rehabilitation support offers a real boost to their absence management ability.
In smaller organisations, where personal relationships are generally stronger, it is important to be able to depersonalise absence and manage it fairly but professionally, as well as get an employee back to work as quickly as possible as their contribution may be more acutely missed than in a larger organisation.
Few SMEs will have in-house HR or legal support service and will, therefore, benefit from the insurers offering of outsourced legal services, combining telephone support with online document creation. This helps organisations comply with the basics of employment law at no additional charge.
In summary, if advisers focus only on the traditional broking of benefits they will be left behind, as the financial aspects of our insurance products becomes just one part of a proposition offering daily use of relevant services to employers, employees and their family members.
If price is the sole focus of the insurance product, valuable assets will be lost.
Group IP vocational rehabilitation support, quality EAP offerings and other value added services will become the arbiter of decisions over which insurer to choose. This provides advisers with a chance to consult with their clients on the best insurance offering for them and, wherever possible, to maximise the widespread communication of the benefits provided.
Forward-looking advisers will change their business models to think of insurers not just as product providers but also as valued service providers. n
Paul Avis is marketing director at Canada Life Group
