Zurich income protection: Helping your customers on their claims journey

Income protection is something that’s important to have but we hope to never need. Understanding the claims process ahead of any claim, however, can bring substantial benefits.

At Zurich, we recognise the important role that our intermediary partners play in customer education.

“Advisers who talk to their customers about the claims process at the point of sale can bring them substantial benefits further down the line, should they suffer illness or injury and make a claim,” says Leanne Rogers, a Claims Technical Consultant at Zurich.

Below, we outline some key messages for advisers to convey to customers, and the benefits of helping them on their claims journey.

1. The importance of early notification about your customers claim

Deferred Periods on Zurich income protection policies range from four weeks to two years. And while customers might think they don’t need to let us know about a claim until near the end of their deferred period, there is huge merit in telling us as soon as possible.

“If a customer lets us know as soon as possible and providing they follow the steps that are agreed with the claims assessor, we’ll start waiving their premiums straight away,” says Rogers.

“So, say a customer has a three-month deferred period and lets us know once they’ve been unable to work for two weeks, we could potentially save them 2 months’ worth of premiums while we’re assessing their claim.”

Early notification allows us to see if we can help your customer on the road to recovery, too. Depending on the type of illness or injury, this could include a referral to a provider within our network of specialist rehabilitation services, or our inhouse team of nurses. These services are available at no additional charge for our customers to use and could potentially allow them to bypass NHS waiting lists

“Say someone is off work for a mental health reason or they have cancer and are suffering mentally, we have a rehabilitation partner that we can put them in touch with to provide free counselling sessions,” says Rogers.

“We also have an internal rehab team of trained specialists, including a cardiac nurse, a specialist cancer nurse, a mental health nurse and a physiotherapist – plenty of people who can help.”

2. Information we need to assess your customers claim

Notifying us of a claim as soon as possible allows us to start to gather all the medical and financial information we need to process your customers claim.

“We need to gather medical information from their GP or physician, as well as evidence of the income they’re currently earning. Early notification means we have the time we need to assess the claim and avoids any potential delays in us being able to start paying the claim after the deferred period,” adds Rogers.

Firstly, we need medical information. We write to the treating physician or physicians, whether that’s a GP, hospital consultant or physiotherapist for example.

“On average, it takes about eight to ten weeks to get a response,” says Rogers.

“We chase for the return of this information on a weekly basis but given the pressure that the NHS is under, insurance requests tend to go to the bottom of the pile.”

We also need employment and income information. If a customer is employed, we need to see their pay slips and P60 to get an overview of their earnings. If they’re self-employed, we need to see their latest accounts and self-assessment tax return(s).

3. How we assess income at the point of your customers claim

If your customer is employed, we typically assess their claim using their last 12 months’ earnings.

If they’ve started a new job within the last 12 months, we can use their salary as per their employment contract. If we use their contract, we only consider guaranteed income, not any bonuses, commission or company benefits that are not guaranteed.

We also wouldn’t use this approach for anyone who can set their own salary, such as company directors, or if it results in us providing a lower monthly benefit compared to an assessment of their last 12 months’ earnings.

“Most insurers terms and conditions state in the event of a claim they’ll assess a customer’s income based on their earnings over the last 12 months. This raises questions around what advisers should do when setting up a policy for someone who’s recently had a significant increase in salary, perhaps due to starting a new job. Do they base their advice on the new earnings, or average out the last 12-months income to avoid potential short term over insurance? You can ask the same question of providers when they allow customers to increase their monthly benefit during the policy term. Clearly stating we’ll allow an assessment of current salary helps to mitigate this risk and gives advisers and their customers more certainty”, says Rogers.

If your customer is a company director or self-employed, we again typically assess their claim using their last 12 months’ earnings but can consider their last 36 months’ earnings if this gives a more accurate reflection of their true income.

This benefits customers who are diagnosed with a deteriorating condition and continue to work but struggle to generate their typical income.

“An example might be a tradesman with their own business who has bad knees. They have carried on working but have had to take on less work, so their earnings have fallen during the last 12 months,” says Rogers.

“If we can see some medical evidence that they have had these problems and it supports their loss of earnings, we can consider taking an average of their previous 36 months’ earnings to avoid penalising them for carrying on working.”

Both approaches were previously part of Zurich’s claims philosophy but are now included in the terms and conditions to give advisers and their customers greater certainty and reassurance.

“We’ve refreshed our Income Protection proposition to give our customers greater security that we will be there for them if and when they need it,” adds Rogers.