How to Help Clients Use Family Caregiver Benefits

Once your client chooses an IDI policy with a family caregiving benefit, you can help make sure they know how to use it. To help a client use the benefit to its fullest, it's important to break down how to file a claim. To file a caregiving claim, the process is similar to submitting a regular IDI claim. Your client will need to provide information regarding the loved one's condition and demonstrate a loss of time and earnings in his or her occupation.

You also can help by making sure that your client is equipped with the following:

• The phone number of the claims department. This is for initiating the claim and any follow-up questions or conversations.
• An understanding of the type of information that will be needed. For notice of claim, this generally includes:

o What is the relationship of the loved one to the client?

o What is the cause of the claim?

o When did the condition begin?

o Where should correspondence and benefits be sent?

• An understanding of the forms that will be sent to the client and their loved one for completion. At a minimum, these include an Insured's Statement, an Attending Physician's Statement and an Authorization Form.

One of the most important things to understand is timing — not only for filing the claim but for relevant policy provisions. For some policies, the loved one's health condition is used to satisfy the benefit waiting period. The waiting period can vary by policy, with some benefit waiting periods as short as 30 days while others could be much longer — 180 days or more.

But that doesn't mean that a client should wait that amount of time to inform the carrier. It's important for a client to connect with the IDI carrier right away, and not wait until the waiting period has been exhausted. This way, the claim evaluation process can begin and the claims team can be prepared to share a decision and provide any benefits that are payable in a timely manner.

Relieve the burden

As more clients find themselves in the sandwich generation, more and more will face the burden of having to work while providing full-time care for an ailing family member. Help relieve some of this burden by preparing clients ahead of time with financial protection via family caregiving benefits. With this new IDI benefit, you can help your clients prepare for those difficult times and therefore allow them to focus on the people who are important to them, without worrying about income

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook and Twitter.

Sophia Horsman is the senior director of IDI claims at Standard Insurance Company. She is a member of the Education and Disability committees of the International Claim Association.