Individual disability rates rise in Colorado

Insurers seem to have been competing a lot harder for small-group disability insurance business in 2011 than for individual or large-group business.

The Colorado Division of Insurance has given statistical snapshots of the state’s disability insurance market in a new health cost report, which focuses mainly on data from 2011, and a similar report published a year earlier.

Total enrollment in all disability insurance plans in force in the state fell to 1.2 million in 2011, down about 6 percent from the total reported the previous year.

Ownership of individual policies increased 2.3 percent, to about 103,000, and enrollment in large-group plans fell 7.2 percent, to about 1 million. 

Enrollment in small-group plans climbed 8.1 percent, to about 43,500.