Disability Insurance Awareness Month 2024
It’s that wonderful and special time of year again when we as an industry take a serious moment to recognize the fundamental importance of disability insurance to the working American. Too many of us have seen the financial struggles of uninsured families when an income earner loses his or her physical ability to earn a paycheck. We have heard numerous stories and witnessed firsthand our clients having been saved by the benefits of individual and/or group disability policies. We have seen them keep their homes, pay their bills, send their children to college even though an accident or illness has stolen their ability to work.
Although the DI industry is a fraction of annual health insurance sales in this country, disability insurance is so important and has such a significant financial impact on consumers.
During one’s working years, disablement is as much a reality as dying. You would therefore think this type of insurance would be prescribed as readily as life insurance, but that isn’t the case. DI is relatively neglected, and that is why this month is imperative to the greater insurance industry and to the American workforce.
We need to show the people of this country that they are at financial risk without adequate amounts of personal disability insurance. Their businesses are at financial risk without adequate amounts of business disability insurance. And we need to remind the insurance agents, brokers and advisors of this country how to promote and sell DI.
Organizations like the International DI Society, the Council for Disability Awareness and Life Happens put enormous effort and financial backing each year into the promotion of disability insurance in the United States. The month of May is their time to shine. Please check-out their websites for a vast depository of disability-related information, statistics, videos and tools that you can utilize for your own marketing, education and business purposes.
According to a Life Happens study, three in 10 Americans will become disabled for a period in excess of 90 days during their working career. The value of DI couldn’t be clearer. Although commonly misunderstood and often ineffectively prescribed by insurance professionals, disability insurance should more often be a focal point of insurance sales presentations. DI matters because your clients’ financial freedoms matter, and DIAM can help you show them just how much they matter and how financially precarious most American lives truly are.
Help us celebrate DIAM by sharing your insight of disability insurance with your clients, hammering it home that social security disability benefits and workers comp alone aren’t sufficient income protection.