AIA NZ’s underwriting approach to mental ill health disclosures for Income Protection cover now include a new set of questions to help increase automated underwriting via the firm’s AIAHub platform.
The insurer’s Chief Customer Officer Sharron Botica says with the growing maturity of automated underwriting, thanks to years of customer disclosures, it is now able to better support customers with mental ill health.
Botica says applications for Income Protection have always been referred for manual underwriting when mental health issues are disclosed, irrespective of the severity or type of mental health condition – or the impact on a customer’s circumstances.
“Across the market mental ill health is considered a disclosure that requires independent, third party information such as a doctor’s report, to ensure it can be accurately underwritten due its subjective or changing nature, which makes it difficult to assess,” she says.
“Mental ill health disclosures are never easy, and the revised question set will offer AIA NZ customers the chance to share their personal experiences, and allow our underwriters to only become more involved on those cases that require further consideration.”
Botica says while severe mental ill health conditions will be automatically referred, some milder conditions that have minimal or no impact on daily work and activities, will – in the majority of cases – no longer require additional medical information.
In its 2020 Wellbeing study, the Mental Health Foundation said a quarter of New Zealanders have poor levels of mental and emotional wellbeing, including nearly a third of women.