From 2000 to 2008 UNUMProvident was identified as the worst disability insurer in the country. Unum’s unfair strategies were investigated by Eliot Spitzer’s office and the company came very close to criminal charges, both in New York and California. Prudential Financial and Mass Mutual were close seconds to some of the worst disability scams in the country.
Today, post COVID, there are several new players in town. While Unum Group appears to be behaving itself, New York Life quickly emerged as the top egregious disability claims organization. Judging by the number of denied claimants who have contacted me, as well as the issues involved, it appears New York Life is denying claims (and lots of them!) indiscriminately.
New York Life is not good at what it does. One of its claims handlers I spoke to had no idea what ERISA is, which doesn’t surprise me because the company does NOT enforce ERISA timelines, nor does it care about “objective claim review.” I recently accepted three NYL cases and its indiscriminate denial and mismanagement of claims is quite evident from the communications they sent out.
Currently, taking a close second today, is Lincoln Financial, which by the way, was never a fair disability claims reviewer to begin with. In my opinion, Lincoln’s failing is not conducting a complete investigation before it denies claims. Just recently, I was assisting a client with a Lincoln claim and lucked out by having a very fair claims handler. Still, Lincoln operates in ways that are the result of inefficiency, and lack of a decent knowledge base on managing disability claims.
In fact, all of the current disability claims insurers are operating under the same guise of lack of knowledge and inefficiency. It takes at least 24 months working under a mentor for any new claims handler to clearly understand what they are doing, The mistakes made today DO affect insureds and claimants financially, but it doesn’t look as though any of the disability companies intend to throw money at centralization, oversight and training.
So, what do we do about it, you might be asking? Unfortunately, the answer is that the burden of defending their claims resides with them. Insureds and claimants MUST know how to PUSH BACK defending Plan and Policy provisions, and yes, filing complaints and calling insurers on every lie they tell you. Of course, insureds have to know what’s a lie and what isn’t, so it’s important for insureds to be more knowledgeable and aware than ever before.
And, let me say this, the answer IS NOT Mr. Google or AI, or, even another insured with a disability claim. It is very risky to depend on the Internet or AI for risk management information relating to disability claims. In a sense, what I share with my clients can be said to be INSIDER INFORMATION. And, you won’t get that from high tech data bases.
Anyway, the two new “bad boys” in town are New York Life and Lincoln Financial. If you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call.
