Unum Wants More Colonial Life Agents in More Territories

Unum recent acquired Starmount, a dental and vision plan provider, and that added $41 million in premium revenue to total revenue, the company said.

"The dental and vision lines are exceeding our expectations," Mike Simonds, chief executive officer of the Unum U.S. division, said during the conference call.

Unum also began taking orders for employer medical stop-loss insurance, with the first stop-loss arrangements taking effect Jan. 1.

Medical stop-loss insurance protects employers that run their own self-insured health plans against catastrophic claims.

Simonds said he doubts the unit will have much effect on Unum results in the next two years.

But Unum believes it has the people and underwriting experience to do well in that market, and "importantly, it gets us insight into what employers are planning to do with their overall employee benefits program earlier in the cycle," Simonds said.

Steve Zabel, head of Unum's closed block unit, which oversees a large block of long-term care insurance, talked about the outcome of rate increases.

When Unum imposes a big long-term care insurance premium increase, it offers the policyholders a "landing spot," or opportunity to hold down premiums by accepting a lower level of coverage. More than 50% of the affected policyholders are taking up the landing spot offers, Zabel said.

The take-up level "clearly varies by the level of increase that was actually approved," Zabel said. "Where the increases are higher, the adoption rate is going to be a bit higher."

— Check out A Q2 Insurance Earnings Release Guide for Agents on ThinkAdvisor.