Claims Specialist Calls For Informal Solutions

Bonita Springs, Fla.

Insurers, producers and regulators should find ways to streamline the disability insurance claims process without creating more red tape, according to a veteran claims consultant.

Gerald Katz of Disability Income Concepts Inc., Weston, Fla., spent years working in the disability insurance industry as a distributor and product designer with a predecessor company of what is now Unum, Chattanooga, Tenn., and he is a past president of the Disability Insurance Training Council.

For more than a decade, Katz has been operating on his own as a disability insurance expert witness and disability insurance claims consultant.

Over the past five years, since the disability claim controversy crested, scrutiny of the claim process “has probably lightened up the aggressiveness of claims investigators,” Katz said here in an interview at the disability insurance conference organized by JHA, Portland, Maine. “But they’re still very thorough.”

In part because insurers have concerns about consumers who might filing weak or false claims, insurers often ask claimants for more information without giving many, if any, clues about why, Katz said.

“The majority of legitimate claims are certainly paid,” but claimants may experience delays, and what seem to be unnecessarily extensive requests for documentation before getting any benefits, Katz said.