The MMHPI carries out regular polls and recently found that nearly 25 per cent of people have taken over a year off sick due to a mental health issue over the last five years. Less than 10 per cent received help from an insurance policy. How did those without insurance cope? Nearly 70 per cent went without non-essentials, while over 40 per cent borrowed money and spent savings.
The MMHPI is calling for: a review of underwriting and pricing for mental health, ensuring compliance with the Equality Act; shared best practice to ensure understanding of exclusions; an accessible and supportive disclosure environment; product innovations to improve inclusion for people with pre-existing conditions.
3. The industry should work much more collaboratively with specialist wellbeing service providers to support behaviour change and reduce claims.
Mark Twigg, executive director at Cicero Consulting, also speaking at the conference and part of the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) Access to Insurance Group, echoed these sentiments by also calling for the industry to build better engagement with the SME sector to help strengthen the role of the group risk market.
At the same time though, he made it clear that there is work to be done to ensure much more proactivity by the industry.
He highlighted the fact that around 33m people in the UK are in work, many of whom will have mental health issues of varying degrees, yet only 8 per cent (2.5m) are covered by group IP.
“Early intervention is key,” he adds. “I’m very open about my mental health problems and have an array of initiatives in-house to help take the stress off people [at Cicero] and reduce the risk of mental health issues.
"We have group IP but our insurers have been absolutely absent in all of this: no proactive discussions about early intervention; and no acknowledgement of our own preventative measures evidenced by the fact that, despite of all our work, premiums have gone up.
“Insurers have the data and tools to incentivise employers and employees but they’re not doing this.”
Meanwhile, Dr Yvonne Braun, Director of Policy, Long-Term Savings and Protection at the ABI, commented that last year 75,000 interventions were made to support people, in the shape of things like Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) and fast-track access to counselling, but also conceded that “despite all of this, the sector is a real sleeping giant”.
The need for proactivity around early interventions – or added-value support services – applies as much to the individual sector as group.
Justin Harper, head of marketing at LV=, adds: “Protection has so much more to offer than just financial resilience.”
