Enabling customers to tell their story about their mental health is key to reducing the likelihood that a mental health exclusion will be applied.
This is according to Peter Hamilton, head of market engagement at Zurich (pictured), who spoke to Health & Protection at today’s launch of the insurer’s Value of Mental Health report at Parliament earlier today.
When asked how the protection sector can stop exclusions being applied where customers are proactively taking care of their mental health, Hamilton told Health & Protection it is important that both mental health and physical health is treated in the same way and that good practices be recognised.
Telling their story
But he added people should also be allowed to tell their story.
“It’s worth stating to be clear that more than 90% of applications with mental health get accepted so it’s quite rare for people with mental health to have exclusions.
“Normal everyday anxiety shouldn’t affect your ability to get it for the price, so for a lot of people there isn’t an issue there.
“But the one thing that makes it potentially harder is online systems and I can’t be sure how many systems do this, but the way that a number has been designed over time has been given slow, binary answers. That’s harder for people with mental health.”
Free text box
Hamilton added Zurich gives its customers a free text box to elaborate on the state of their mental health.
“So you’ve had some mental health episodes,” he continued. “Give us some context, why was that, what’s happening now, how are you living and coping with that?
“Whereas a lot of online systems have been developed where the machine can give you an answer. But the machine, today at least, can’t easily interpret the text you might put into the box.
“So I think one thing that’s beneficial is making available and encouraging people to tell their story in their own words as opposed to relying on set text.”
Contact and context
And where issues are unclear, Hamilton revealed the insurer’s underwriters will ring customers up for more information.
“If anything it’s trying to add that human contact and context,” he concluded.
