If you have an insurance policy with a disability insurance company, like Unum, and you’ve had your insurance claim denied, or your insurance claim has been approved and later terminated, you may be eligible for additional benefits. The first thing you should do when entering into a contract with any disability insurance company is to get a copy of your disability insurance policy and keep it in a secure place with your other important policies.

Even if your disability insurance policy comes with your employment, make sure you get a copy of your policy. Disability insurance companies are not above denying you benefits that are legally yours, just because you don’t have a copy of the disability insurance policy. The first thing you must do if you file an insurance claim and you have your insurance claim denied, is to read your policy coverage.

Prior to 2004 the largest disability insurance company in the U.S., Unum, was accused of engaging in “unfair claim settlement practices” involving every state in the United States. This was resolved when New York State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer, on November 18, 2004,  announced a landmark settlement with Unum that resolved a multi-state (all states, including the District of Columbia and American Samoa) investigation into Unum’s alleged unfair claims handling practices that included a continuing program of bad faith benefits denials.

Disability Insurance Company Settlement

The settlement sought to address established claims handling practices for both long term individual disability income (“IDI”) and group disability insurance (“LTD”) policies and determine if the disability income claims handling practices of these Companies reflected systemic “unfair claim settlement practices”.

The settlement made significant changes in the policies of the group Unum, Unum Provident, First Unum, etc. (1) to reassess approximately 200,000 claimants whose IDI or LTD insurance claims had previously been denied; (2) to completely restructure its claims handling procedures to ensure objectivity and fairness; including the engagement of experienced claim personnel at the earliest possible stage of the claim process, and (3) to pay a 15-million-dollar fine.

Many of the consumers involved in the Unum scandal were participants of ERISA covered disability insurance plans. Colorado recently took steps to prevent the types of practices that have become commonplace with disability insurance companies like Unum. Colorado recently joined 16 other states in preventing the payment of bonuses or similar financial incentives by disability insurance companies like Unum to adjusters for denying or delaying claims with merit or medical care.

Contact Our Disability Insurance Attorney

These tactics have been employed by Unum and a variety of other names, including First Unum, Unum Insurance and Unum Provident, over the years. There are thousands of consumers who have had their employee benefits denied unfairly. Many individuals are unaware of the fact that their short term disability insurance or long term disability insurance are provided through their employer and any disputes are subject to the federal law of ERISA and exempt from state law.

If you or a loved one has been unfairly denied a claim from your disability insurance company, contact us by clicking here, insurance claim denied, for a free case evaluation. Contact a disability insurance attorney at The Law Offices of Nadrich & Cohen, we can help you.

Tags: disability insurance attorney, disability insurance company, disability insurance policy insurance claim denied, long term disability insurance, unum, UnumProvident

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 1:38 am and is filed under UnumProvident. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.