Most people don't think twice about insuring valuable assets such as their cars or homes. However, millions leave themselves financially vulnerable every day by completely overlooking the importance of protecting something worth much more – their paychecks.
That's why the nonprofit LIFE Foundation is once again coordinating Disability Insurance Awareness Month (DIAM) in May to educate consumers about the important role disability insurance plays in having a sound financial plan. This year's campaign will have a simple message – Protect Your Paycheck – to help consumers connect disability insurance with the important protection it provides. The campaign is also a call to action for producers to reach out to clients and prospects and encourage them to protect their paychecks with disability insurance. In addition, benefits specialists can pass the message on to their employer-clients that May is the perfect time to let employees know about their disability insurance benefits and the need to protect their most valuable asset, their paycheck.
"This May, we want to get the message out that if you have a job and earn a paycheck, you need disability insurance," said Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, RFC, president and CEO of the LIFE Foundation. "Our goal is to educate Americans about the benefits disability insurance provides and we hope agents and companies will do their part to help ensure people get the coverage they need."
Disability Insurance Awareness Month campaign tools for agents
To help companies and producers take advantage of the DIAM campaign, LIFE has created a toolkit that provides insurance agents and benefits specialists with the resources they need to execute their own marketing and communications initiatives. The kit can be accessed at www.lifehappens.org/diamkit and includes embeddable videos, downloadable flyers, a customizable news article and release, eCards, a marketing guide-and more.
To help producers incorporate more disability insurance into their practice, LIFE is hosting a free webinar for producers, "Ramp Up Your DI Sales This May," on April 7, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Top disability insurance producers and experts in the field will share their tips and sales ideas, and LIFE will highlight free tools and resources that producers can use to reach out to clients and prospects during May.
LIFE also is coordinating a variety of consumer awareness-building initiatives and will launch new resources to help the industry reinforce the benefits of disability insurance to clients. At the core of these efforts is a new consumer-facing microsite, www.protectyourpaycheck.org, which will house interactive tools, videos and educational information that focus on disability insurance and reinforce the Protect Your Paycheck theme. The site will be launched in late April.
To get consumers thinking about the importance of their paycheck and all the essential things that it pays for, LIFE also will sponsor the "This Moment Made Possible by My Paycheck" photo contest. The contest will ask consumers to submit a photo and caption depicting a memorable moment made possible by their paychecks. The entrant with the best photo and caption will receive a $500 gift card. The contest will run throughout the month of May and will be accessible through the microsite and LIFE's Facebook fanpage.
